Non-People/Country Things in AH that are wanked

Lessee....I have a good list, here's just a snippet of it:

1) Nuclear Weapons. Why? How many times have they been used since 1945 (and we Yankeestanis used them)? How many wars have happened between nuclear powers without using them (and I don't mean proxy wars, either)? How much does nuclear winter compare to say, the Yellowstone Supervolcano?

2) Swords. Bloody damn things are hard to use and don't cut armor very well. So, what did people use instead? Pikes or maces. Same with their Japanese versions, Samurai were using arquebuses for centuries before Perry came calling.

3) The entire German Panzer line. Not enough of the ones the Germans needed, too much on superweapons that gobbled up way too much of the budget. A good thing for those the Nazis intended to conquer, but still...exorbitantly wasteful.

4) Big-ass walls built to keep out barbarians. Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall did what again? :rolleyes:

5) The Analytical Engine. Good God, even if it had worked, the Computer Revolution required WWII to start the whole shebang. A more successful analytical engine isn't going to have the government financing it like happened with the Internet.

and....

6) Agriculture. For some reason, the conquest of sedentary societies is always inevitable, and the emergence of larger-scale nomadic cultures is ignored. Even in timelines with agriculture, not every one of them is going to develop the kind of mechanized agriculture that exists in the US and Europe, and also nomadic peoples are ignored in terms of TLs as a whole.
 
2) Swords. Bloody damn things are hard to use and don't cut armor very well. So, what did people use instead? Pikes or maces. Same with their Japanese versions, Samurai were using arquebuses for centuries before Perry came calling.
They are also also expensive to make and require trained craftsmen. If you don't make them right they can bend or break. In contrast spears are much easier. You can cast a load of the points in bulk for less than the cost of a sword and any peasant worth his salt can shaft one.

As for maces, I guess that they aren't that common because you are less vulnerable giving an enemy a poke with a pointy stick than trying to whack them with a blunt instrument. However, compared with swords, even if they block the strike, a heavy blow can still inflict damage.
 
Islamic occupation of England? :confused: I could understand if you said France or Spain, but England? I can only name two timelines offhand that have that. In fact I can't even name them, I just remember there were two.

Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt has all of Europe being settled by Moslems after over 90% of Europe's population perishes during the Black Death.

Overused stuff:

  1. China (or Japan) doesn't become a closed society
  2. Victorious Confederates/Nazis/Napoleon/Revolutionary War British
  3. JFK not assassinated, or FDR assassinated
  4. Anything involving WWII, or the US Civil War
Underused stuff:

  1. Great Britain able to maintain its colonial empire
  2. France taking the place of OTL Britain during the 19th century as the pre-eminent world power (in a scenario that doesn't involve a more successful Napoleon)
  3. Mexico (or any other Latin American country except Brazil) as a superpower
  4. Hawaii remains independent, declares neutrality during WWII--who's first to violate Hawaiian neutrality? Or do the US/Britain/Japan use Hawaii as a Switzerland of the Pacific?
  5. Victorious New England secession prior to 1850
  6. Siberian Land Bridge remains intact after last Ice Age
 
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt has all of Europe being settled by Moslems after over 90% of Europe's population perishes during the Black Death.
Somebody else had a similar theme only it was 67% and not 90% of the Europeans dying. The big question here is that not withstanding superior Moor sanitation technology, why would they not get hit to a point that they would be more concerned about resettling depopulated territory than invading cold and wet Christendom?
 
Robinson had them moving in a couple of centuries later, after the plague (a much more virulent and therefore shorter-lived strain) had long run its course. And the settlement was gradual, not all at once (even into what would have been the 20th century OTL large expanses of France and Germany were still relatively unsettled). By the end of the book (mid-21st century) Europe's considered a backwater relative to the successful Islamic, Chinese, and Native American civilizations that have arisen.

The Mongols OTOH show up on schedule, see huge cities filled with decayed corpses, freak out and turn around.
 
Here's another one: a non-white-controlled, sub-Saharan African superpower or Great Power. What countries might have been able to pull it off? Ethiopia, possibly? Or Zimbabwe under better leadership post-1979?
 
One of my favorites. One set in the 1700-1800s with alchemy and phlogiston, or one in the Victorian Age with Aether would be equally genius.
Here's some other ones.

Overused: Magical creatures-Dragons, vampires-showing up and changing history.
Underused-Prehistoric creatures surviving their extinction and changing history. Dinosaurs are at least as cool as vampires, and are real. Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh was okay, but I want my dinos!

Not sure if this entirly counts, but Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" is a sorta Alt-History, with Vampires.
Hellsing and co, Fails to kill Dracula, Dracula takes London By storm, and.....well, If Fu Manchu, Mycroft Holmes, Elizibeth Bathory and such play roles...you see where this is going.

Over used: Nazis, Confederate states of america, long lasting USSR, Republic of texas, Emperor Norton.

under used: Japan keeps Korea, independent non-Norton California, No tanks/panzers, etc.

seriously, Tanks, they had issues with the early ones, so what if, instead of a Successful working type, they just gave up?
 
In Neville Shute's "In the Wet" it does not, at least not until after the nineteen seventies. No republic though, but a monarch that continues in strength. Also (and none of this will spoil the plot).

1) A war in south east Asia that involves large numbers of Australians including the their air force (a super Vietnam?)

2) Top speed of aircraft still less than Mach one

3) No independence for India or Rhodesia, UDI or otherwise).


Re the Commonwealth question - I was referring to the English Civil War victor state in the 17th century rather than the British Commonwealth of Nations
 
The revolutionary thing about the Watts engine was it was practical for industrial use. It put out enough power that it could be used to run the pumps in coal mines, so it suddenly had an actual profitable use.

Savery's and Newcomen's engines were already the ones that dried mines and were of limited industrial use. Watt improved the steam engine tremendously, yes, but for removing water from mines the principle was already known and in profitable use. Watt's revolutionary accomplishment was the engine that provided a rotary movement to power workshops and factories. A minor nitpick, I know, but a relevent one, because it is unlikely there was a Watt engine without the atmospheric steam engines of the preceding century or so.
 
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One of my favorites. One set in the 1700-1800s with alchemy and phlogiston, or one in the Victorian Age with Aether would be equally genius.
Here's some other ones.

There was an RPG called Space: 1889 that was based on the premise that the aether really existed, and that the other planets were pretty much as depicted in late 19th/early 20th century pulp literature. Thomas Edison is the first man on Mars, and the Great Game is expanded to the inner solar system.

Overused: Magical creatures-Dragons, vampires-showing up and changing history.
Underused-Prehistoric creatures surviving their extinction and changing history. Dinosaurs are at least as cool as vampires, and are real. Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh was okay, but I want my dinos!

Unfortunately a POD that permits dinosaurs to survive (except on an isolated continent (Australia, South America without the Panama isthmus, or a warmer Antarctica) probably also prohibits the evolution of humans. Humans have been mostly prey for most of the 5 million years or so the species has existed. And even if dinosaurs survive, there's still 65 million years of evolution to account for so whatever's around now probably wouldn't resemble the dinosaurs we're familiar with. Harry Harrison's West of Eden is probably about the best one out there for this.

Now, Pliocene or Pleistocene megafauna (mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooths, giant sloths, etc.) surviving into modern times would be awesome, and theoretically possible. How does this affect settlement of the Americas?
 
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under used: Japan keeps Korea, independent non-Norton California, No tanks/panzers, etc.

seriously, Tanks, they had issues with the early ones, so what if, instead of a Successful working type, they just gave up?

Re California: nobody really seems to do much with the California Republic set up by John C. Fremont. It may actually have had a chance to succeed. If the Mormons had thrown in their lot with Fremont rather than Kearney (perhaps in exchange for Fremont's assurance that their religion would be tolerated in California) that may have thrown the balance of power over to the Republic.

Tanks: as manufacturing technology improves, someone's bound to take the idea off the shelf again at some point, not unlike the development of aviation in OTL. WWII might work out very differently, particularly the Eastern Front, but eventually someone is going to try building tanks again and get it right.
 
under used: Japan keeps Korea, independent non-Norton California, No tanks/panzers, etc.

seriously, Tanks, they had issues with the early ones, so what if, instead of a Successful working type, they just gave up?
Oh, oh, I know this one! The demand for a vehicle that could do well in a WWI combat scenario provided no other option than to forge ahead with tank design. G'wan, what are the other options? Increased "stormtrooper" training, what with manpower already starting to be strained? A good successful combat vehicle for WWI would need to not only be able to withstand hails of bullets and thus be well armored, but also trek over the poor-quality roads and sometimes-muddy terrain of the front, necessitating treads instead of conventional wheels. What else could've been done?
 
Oh, oh, I know this one! The demand for a vehicle that could do well in a WWI combat scenario provided no other option than to forge ahead with tank design. G'wan, what are the other options? Increased "stormtrooper" training, what with manpower already starting to be strained? A good successful combat vehicle for WWI would need to not only be able to withstand hails of bullets and thus be well armored, but also trek over the poor-quality roads and sometimes-muddy terrain of the front, necessitating treads instead of conventional wheels. What else could've been done?

Increased aviation development? Why even worry about the ground when you can fly over it and drop lots of bombs on the enemy's trenches? Yes, the weather will present a problem, but it limits everyone no matter what they're using. And WWI planes, while not without their problems, matured as a technology a lot faster than tanks.

A TL which avoids or limits WWI will almost certainly delay the development of tanks (even into WWII in OTL there were some military establishments which did not see the merit in the idea). But such a TL will alter a lot more than just the development of mechanized warfare--and incidentally has been done lots of times before.
 
Increased aviation development? Why even worry about the ground when you can fly over it and drop lots of bombs on the enemy's trenches? Yes, the weather will present a problem, but it limits everyone no matter what they're using. And WWI planes, while not without their problems, matured as a technology a lot faster than tanks.
Bombing trenches? They did that throughout the war, although they called it "artillery bombardment" most of the time.

Planes themselves can only do so much, and probably did the best they could given the circumstances. You need to reinforce the infantry on the ground with more firepower that can easily be mobilized and follow troops as they advance, not further attempts to blow trenches to shreds from far away.
 
Bombing trenches? They did that throughout the war, although they called it "artillery bombardment" most of the time.

Planes themselves can only do so much, and probably did the best they could given the circumstances. You need to reinforce the infantry on the ground with more firepower that can easily be mobilized and follow troops as they advance, not further attempts to blow trenches to shreds from far away.

And so again, we still end up with tanks, although I can still envision development of heaver, longer-range bombers as a stop-gap to interfere with logistics, command and control, etc. and even the artillery still needs spotters that are less likely to be killed by those pesky enemy troops on the ground. And who knows? Maybe some bright guy gets the idea to equip some troops with parachutes and convince them to jump out of a plane behind an enemy trench, catching that SOB with the machineguns or the howitzers from behind...

The idea behind the tank is just one of those that you can't really do away with unless you do away with warfare itself. Someone's bound to try it, sooner or later: knights mounted on chargers are what you get when you eliminate the internal combustion engine and gunpowder from the idea. And da Vinci was sketching armored vehicles 500 years before the technology to actually power them was even remotely available. Once automobiles were developed, specialized motor vehicles for warfare of one type or another were probably inevitable.
 
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The idea behind the tank is just one of those that you can't really do away with unless you do away with warfare itself. Someone's bound to try it, sooner or later: knights mounted on chargers are what you get when you eliminate the internal combustion engine and gunpowder from the idea. And da Vinci was sketching armored vehicles 500 years before the technology to actually power them was even remotely available. Once automobiles were developed, specialized motor vehicles for warfare of one type or another were probably inevitable.
My view would be slightly different, though... yes, I'm well aware of the vague attempts pre-WWI to develop something like a tank, in various countries. And aware of the circumstances... but probably all we need to do is either have an earlier WWI, or make it different - continuing to be a war of maneuver, for whatever reason - and there is no reason to develop tanks.

Then, of course, someone will get the idea eventually... but since *WWI was a war of maneuver, why would there be a need for these heavy, lumbering things? Obviously, the next war will be more of the same... :rolleyes:

In such a situation, the argument could then be made for sometrhing like OTL's "cavalry" tanks (as they were known in Britain), i.e. something as light and fast as possible while still providing armoured protection vs rifle, MG, and shrapnel; and maybe a small HE-firing cannon (i.e. 20-40mm or around that), as well as a couple of MGs, to support your own troops versus infantry. They would be seen as updated cavalry: something enemy infantry cannot stand against, and which can turn the tide of the battle.

... anyway... that's my flow of consciousness reasining, there. :D
 
There was an RPG called Space: 1889 that was based on the premise that the aether really existed, and that the other planets were pretty much as depicted in late 19th/early 20th century pulp literature. Thomas Edison is the first man on Mars, and the Great Game is expanded to the inner solar system.
Also see Adam Roberts' novel Polystom. Umm... imagine if Aristotlean cosmology was... not entirely wrong. :):cool:
 

Baskilisk

Banned
Why is it always the Americans that use the nuke?
Overused: Imperially wanked USA. Divided USA North/South. Nuclear-happy USA.
Underused: East-West divided USA. Isolated non-expansionist republic USA. Good intentions USA.
 
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