Nuclear Power or Weaponry Before 1900

Sachyriel

Banned
I know you can do it, and I'm going to say this right now: No altering the calender to fit your needs.

If you can explain it to someone like me, who has a knowledge of pre-1900 history is basically "No cellphones?" then you've got something plausible enough for my purposes.

I'm sure this has been done before.

What I was thinking is we butterfly (hand-wave?) away the American Revolution to expand the British Empire's technological base and have a series of minor parallel points in the universe to our own but earlier that accelerate the development of these technical answers and their implementation. But, since I'm a guy who doesn't have a firm grasp of reality anyways you're gonna have to help me out.
 
Have Italy, Austrian Empire, Germany and some other stuff around (like Poland) unified somehow by mid-800. You'd have Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie working together with Planck, Roentgen and Marconi. :)

Seriously, what you need is a great power sponsoring a whole great research program. First discoveries in radioctivity were made by chance by Roentgen and Becquerel, but it took some time for anybody to figure out what they had come into. It took Planck and Rutherford to have a basis for what would become an explanation, and this with having the Maxwell's work about wave already done.
Becquerel's discoveries could have made decades before, let's by Berzelius for example. Or maybe someone manages to isolate the small part of plutonium out of pitchblende around 1860 and wonders about the strange behaviour that stuff. But after some point, you'll really need large scale coordianted efforts supported by a state or a great trust.
Maybe Edison feels curious about that?
 
Yellow-cake Uranium is discovered early on, as a toxic, hot rock. Some Emperor obsessed with opulence and with lots of extra slaves devises primitive steam engines and nuclear piles to heat his baths and raise his throne from the basement to impress visitors. He dies of cancer at some point. Thousands of dead slaves later, a smart Emperor realizes it's a waste of manpower, and buries the complex (thus cutting off the cooling water supply). One Chernobyl-lite disaster later, that Empire is destroyed and the area around it is dead for another century or so.

Inspired by a science fiction novel. Is this plausible at all?
 
Let the Greeks accept new technological ideas with open arms. We'll have Steam engines and atom theories before the birth of Christ.
 

The Dude

Banned
Who knows what could've eventually resulted if the Library at Alexandria wasn't burned down? That, as far as I can see, is the only feasible way to accomplish what you desire. Even then, there are absolutely no guarantees.
 
Who knows what could've eventually resulted if the Library at Alexandria wasn't burned down? That, as far as I can see, is the only feasible way to accomplish what you desire. Even then, there are absolutely no guarantees.

Yes, it is a shame the library was destroyed. The Romans could have uncovered some of Hero's texts, and maybe learned a thing or two about the steam engine. Still, that's a stretch.
 
Yes, it is a shame the library was destroyed. The Romans could have uncovered some of Hero's texts, and maybe learned a thing or two about the steam engine. Still, that's a stretch.

As I'm sure you are aware, Hero was a subject of the Roman Empire. No need to do any digging, the Romans bought his inventions.

But this contiuous inflating of the Museion really is getting tedious. Nuclear power requires at the very least the rudiments of exact science. Uranium in its natural state is good for nothing -except maybe giving people cancer. The realisation that it could be made to serve any purpose requires an understanding of subatomic physics. Now, it could conceivably be a wrong understanding (oxidation, reduction, distillation and other processes were used long before they were understood), but it can't be too far off because building nuclear power piles is very far from intuitive. There are natural enrichment processes, and if they were somehow replicated to make 'hot stones', that could be a beginning. Still, very improbable. I think your only option to get to this point is a general acceleration of scientific development.
 
I'm sure this has been done before.


You're correct and here's the most recent iteration from only a month ago: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=171455

One question, if you were sure it had been done before why did you start a thread instead of using the search function? By passively asking instead of actively looking, you received no real answers to your OP and there's even some well meaning fool bringing up those laughable tropes about Hero's steam "engine" and the Library of Alexandria.

Why not look before you ask?
 

Geon

Donor
Queen Victoria's Bomb

I don't know if anyone remembers it but years ago (many years ago) there was an SF novel out entitled Queen Victoria's Bomb. The story tells of a chance discovery by a number of British scientists that, working under great secrecy eventually develop a primitive atomic bomb. The bomb is eventually used in the Crimean War. However, Queen Victioria is so horrified when she sees the results of the explosion that all information on the Bomb is immediately buried. The scientists are sworn to complete secrecy and the incident in Crimea is covered up by a supposed magazine explosion in area. The last scientist writing a letter to his wife, devoutly prays the knowledge is never found again.

Geon
 

Sachyriel

Banned
You're correct and here's the most recent iteration from only a month ago: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=171455

One question, if you were sure it had been done before why did you start a thread instead of using the search function? By passively asking instead of actively looking, you received no real answers to your OP and there's even some well meaning fool bringing up those laughable tropes about Hero's steam "engine" and the Library of Alexandria.

Why not look before you ask?

Because the search engine is quite finicky.
 
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