Is it just me or...

Thucydides

Is it just me or do many people (including me sometimes) on AH ignore the fact that many things in our history happened by accident or just dumb luck?
So I was wondering, why can't I right a TL where someone gets hit by a bus and that changes history, but in real history things like this happened.

Stalin almost died of smallpox.
Lincoln almost died from getting kicked in the head by a horse.
Churchill got hit by a cab.
Andrew Jackson only survived an assassination attempt because of dumb luck.

So I'm not saying that everyone should go butterfly crazy but I was wondering why we don't see more things like this.
 

fernerdave

i almost hit al franken with my cab...not that he's a senator yet but i bet norm colman would be in the senate now if i had
 

Paul Spring

Timelines that start with a single event happening to one person aren't necessarily considered implausible or laughed at. Heck, Thande's "Look to the West" timeline starts with a POD of the heir to the British throne chuckling when his father stumbles at the coronation. That's a smaller event than a death, and yet within a few decades the world is very different, and it's one of the most popular timelines on the entire board.

The key, I think, is that you have to come up with a plausible reason why a particular person's death changed history, and a believable series of events explaining how events and personalities unfolded differently. Most people who are seriously interested in AH don't consider it enough to say "person X died, so 10 years later A happened instead of B" - they want a little more detail about how one thing led to another.
 

Lord Grattan

Wasn't there a TL a while back where (I think it was) the Manhattan Project was disrupted because of a fluke car accident. I think big POD's are more exciting to write about and read about, that's why we get excited about them and easily dismiss small ones.
 

Dave Howery

I vaguely remember a timeline someone came up with on the old board (I think) that all started with someone's pet goldfish named Bubbles that massively changed history as we know it...
 
Fenrir_Angerboda

Fenrir_Angerboda

well there's always 1812: the Rivers of war.
where the POD is At Horseshoe bend.
Rather than taking the arrow to the Crotch that took Sam Housten out of the war, he slips and gets hit in the shoulder or something.
and Yare Yare daze..... Americans win the war of 1812,
next book has a Indian Nation within the USA.....
 
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