Graphic Thread

Poster from an Alternate History where the GLC is never abolished.

AZt93Bx.png
"I want to ride my bicycle" intensifies.
 
"15 Év Élve És Hangosan (Live!)" is the first DVD-release of Hungarian Heavy Metal band Őrszem.

Damn! The more you post from that stuff, the more I want to live in this TL! :D
I really like the song titles and the cover artwork is simple but kind of noble at the same time.

I am definitely interested about more details of this Őrszem-TL, please tell what are other aspects there? Not only in terms of Hungarian Heavy Metal, but also in terms of how European countries are shapes, aboit politics, societies, etc. I'm highly interested there. :)
 
Damn! The more you post from that stuff, the more I want to live in this TL! :D
I really like the song titles and the cover artwork is simple but kind of noble at the same time.

I am definitely interested about more details of this Őrszem-TL, please tell what are other aspects there? Not only in terms of Hungarian Heavy Metal, but also in terms of how European countries are shapes, aboit politics, societies, etc. I'm highly interested there. :)
Thank you very much!^^

I do will post more stuff from my ideas. But I need a bit time to write a good TL with it, but things will come. Currently, I don't have that much time/ a lots of things to do in RL, but more stuff will be posted sooner or later, so no worries about that.^^
But it's really cool, that there a handful of people, who like my weird stuff, haha! :-D Feels great!
 
I'm curious about your timeline. Especially for those Filipino actions in Formosa.

You can go read it, the link is in his... signature (I forgot what those things below posts are called).

I mean, most things in that graphic are unlikely to be relevant soon in the TL since it is in the 1920s yet.
 
Final CoA German Elser.png

Coat of arms of Nazi Germany but the monarchy is restored, or alternatively the German Empire wins World War I then there is a March on Berlin during the Great Depression
 
Courtesy of u/WeirdSymmetry from Reddit: What if the Twin Towers did not collapse on 9/11?

This is admittedly a very unrealistic scenario. The towers must have suffered only a glancing hit for there to be even the slightest chance of survival; the direct hits of OTL basically doomed them right away.

And even if they survived, the extreme damage would have meant eventual demolition within a year or two; there's really no reason to leave such an enormous safety hazard standing after two decades. Not to mention that the derelict towers would have been a depressing scar on the NYC skyline, scaring away locals, tourists and corporate tenants alike.

But damn, the imagery of the World Trade Center - scarred, yet unbroken - still towering over Manhattan after all those years is incredible.

eqau3ig2eel71.png
 
Last edited:
@Pantegral
One of my professors had told us in class that the planes were able to destroy the towers easily because they had just taken off and therefore still had a lot of kerosene.
According to this professor, if the hijacked planes had been planes that were about to land (with much less fuel), the attack on the WTC would have been less devastating and the towers might not have collapsed.
Unfortunately I don't know how true or realistic this scenario is.
 
Courtesy of u/WeirdSymmetry from Reddit: What if the Twin Towers did not collapse on 9/11?

This is admittedly a very unrealistic scenario. The towers must have suffered only a glancing hit for there to be even the slightest chance of survival; the direct hits of OTL basically doomed them right away.

And even if they survived, the extreme damage would have meant eventual demolition within a year or two; there's really no reason to leave such an enormous safety hazard standing after two decades. Not to mention that the derelict towers would have been a depressing scar on the NYC skyline, scaring away locals, tourists and corporate tenants alike.

But damn, the imagery of the World Trade Center - scarred, yet unbroken - still towering over Manhattan after all those years is incredible.

eqau3ig2eel71.png
I believe that if the south tower’s attack failed, the north tower might not have collapsed. Avoiding the south tower’s attack is actually pretty easy, United 175 came within 300ft of crashing into Delta Flight 2315, which in aviation is nothing. Keep in mind that the south tower fell first and was attacked second, and it’s collapse caused a 2.1 magnitude earthquake on the ground. So this is not as impossible as it seems.
 
@Pantegral
One of my professors had told us in class that the planes were able to destroy the towers easily because they had just taken off and therefore still had a lot of kerosene.
According to this professor, if the hijacked planes had been planes that were about to land (with much less fuel), the attack on the WTC would have been less devastating and the towers might not have collapsed.
Unfortunately I don't know how true or realistic this scenario is.
It's definitely true that the planes did a lot more damage because of their full tanks of fuel, but that was the point - the hijackers deliberately chose planes taking off from eastern airports on transcontinental flights to maximize their fuel loads.
 
One of my professors had told us in class that the planes were able to destroy the towers easily because they had just taken off and therefore still had a lot of kerosene.
According to this professor, if the hijacked planes had been planes that were about to land (with much less fuel), the attack on the WTC would have been less devastating and the towers might not have collapsed.
Unfortunately I don't know how true or realistic this scenario is.
It's definitely true that the planes did a lot more damage because of their full tanks of fuel, but that was the point - the hijackers deliberately chose planes taking off from eastern airports on transatlantic flights to maximize their fuel loads.
Your professor makes a good point. The 10,000 gallons of kerosene remaining on each aircraft burned at 1,500 - 1,800°F (800 - 1,000°C). Steel loses 50% of its structural strength at 600°C, and 90% at 1,000°C; more than enough to weaken the towers' frame to the point of collapse.

On the other hand, the fuel actually burnt itself out within 10 minutes; but the combustible interior fittings (rugs, curtains, furniture, paper, etc.) ignited by the initial fire kept burning at extreme temperatures, sustaining the heat transfer that eventually brought the towers down. A plane running on empty might have lead to a much smaller and less intense fire initially, but even that might have only delayed the towers' collapse for a few more hours - the structural damage from extreme impact velocity would remain, the fire would inevitably becomes self-sustaining, and there was simply no way for any firefighting effort to even reach (let alone effectively combat) a blaze between 77-95 floors above ground. And as @Wolfram have said, the hijackers knew about a high fuel load's effectiveness anyway.

I believe that if the south tower’s attack failed, the north tower might not have collapsed. Avoiding the south tower’s attack is actually pretty easy, United 175 came within 300ft of crashing into Delta Flight 2315, which in aviation is nothing. Keep in mind that the south tower fell first and was attacked second, and it’s collapse caused a 2.1 magnitude earthquake on the ground. So this is not as impossible as it seems.
Huh, there's actually a thread discussing this scenario posted four years ago. It's a more plausible outcome, but I still doubt the WTC complex would survive in the long run: the South Tower earthquake was, by all accounts, too weak to meaningfully destabilise the relatively untouched foundations of the North Tower. It was very much secondary to the weakened steel frame that eventually caused the sagging floors to "pancake" downwards.

United 175 crashing would indeed mean the South Tower’s survival, but the North Tower's collapse would have almost certainly damaged it well beyond repair. The facade would be pummeled by thousands of tons of debris, with secondary fires being ignited across the tower's length (as happened with 7 WTC).

Eventually, the ruined South Tower would have to be torn down; as I've said above, both the economic and psychological impact cannot be understated. Controlled demolitions are banned in NYC for obvious reasons; the only option would be to gradually dismantle the South Tower floor by floor. An unprecedented and immensely costly undertaking, but still less so than the equally unprecedented repair and reconstruction of the towers - which would also lead to far less economic gain, since who the hell would want to return?

Billions would have saw the North Tower burning and collapsing on live TV, just like OTL; even if no expense was spared in restoring the Twin Towers, would any corporate tenant be willing to put their headquarters at risk of instant destruction? Would any of their employees be willing to live and work where if anything went wrong, they might have to choose between being buried alive and having to jump to their death? Note that a pure repair means that incorporating major design changes, such as the new 1 WTC's improved security features, would be flat-out impossible. The restored Twin Towers would instantly become a financial black hole and public relations disaster.

The quoted scenario below would probably be the likeliest outcome.
My suspicion is that the South Tower would be damaged beyond economic repair by the collapse of the North Tower, the way many buildings around the site were badly damaged by the collapse IOTL. If anything, this probably delays the construction of a successor, because instead of carting away debris quickly, clearing the site means carefully and cautiously deconstructing one of the tallest skyscrapers on Earth, full of fun things like asbestos.
 
Last edited:
Courtesy of u/WeirdSymmetry from Reddit: What if the Twin Towers did not collapse on 9/11?

This is admittedly a very unrealistic scenario. The towers must have suffered only a glancing hit for there to be even the slightest chance of survival; the direct hits of OTL basically doomed them right away.

And even if they survived, the extreme damage would have meant eventual demolition within a year or two; there's really no reason to leave such an enormous safety hazard standing after two decades. Not to mention that the derelict towers would have been a depressing scar on the NYC skyline, scaring away locals, tourists and corporate tenants alike.

But damn, the imagery of the World Trade Center - scarred, yet unbroken - still towering over Manhattan after all those years is incredible.

eqau3ig2eel71.png

I think it is possible that they would try and rebuild the World Trade Center, if only because Larry Silverstein wouldn't try and let valuable real estate fall into disuse.
 
ftPiZnv.jpg


A World Avoided - New York Times front page, September 10, 2021

Previous Graphics:
CNN.com Mainpage - September 1, 2021
This is fucking terrifying, you know that?

Your writing is excellent; a lot of fictional news articles are quite bad at maintaining the kind of tone and diction we expect from mainstream news sources - too stiff, too informal, riddled with grammatical errors, horrible sentence flows, etc. Your writing, on the other hand, is basically ready for print. And the effort you put into the presentation! Don't think I've ever seen a fake article where every single element - typeface, font size, sectioning, headlines, graphics - were so dead accurate to the real thing.

I do have quite a few questions, if you don't mind.
  • An interesting point is that unlike OTL climate change, which is generally worst off on the global South's hotter climates, TTL ozone depletion would devastate the rich global North first. With UV exposure's catastrophic effects so immediate and obvious to the developed world, has there been any attempt to mitigate CFC production since the Montreal Protocol failed?
  • Love the mention of the "Museum of Plastic". Is plastic production still running full speed ahead, or has it been at least somewhat curtailed?
  • How did the butterflies affect history since 1964? How did the Soviet Union survived, and how is it dealing with UV irradiation, since it's also a mid- to high-latitude country? Is NATO disintegrating because both the US and Europe are too badly weakened by the UV crisis? What's the global geopolitical situation like, especially concerning China and India?
  • If the apocalyptic 2065 projection that you cited in the previous update comes to pass, then what hope is left for human civilisation? OTL climate change (2-3 degrees rise by 2100, depending on pace of climate pledges and green tech adoption) is increasingly judged to be catastrophic, but ultimately survivable. By comparison, TTL's UV poisoining is not just rendering great swathes of the planet increasingly uninhabitable, but causing the progressive collapse of global agriculture. If things are already this bad in 2001, then how many societies would remain functioning by mid-century - when 1) even the tropics' ozone levels have collapsed, 2) DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650%, riddling plants and animals alike with cancer, and 3) spending 5 minutes outdoors in Washington, D.C. is enough to get a sunburn?
  • TTL popular culture must be horribly dark and despondent. Considering the increasing popularity of "doomer" pessimism in OTL media (i.e. r/collapse, climate fiction, etc.), things must be at least an order of magnitude worse in TTL. I'm not at all surprised by the mention of ecological fascism and terrorism.
 
Last edited:
Top