The most ASB moments to happen in history... that still happened (Post-1900)

[Basileus444]

I'd add to that "unusually small vocabulary for expressing objection".

Country A holding the idiot ball for decades on end while Country B consistently does everything right isn't ASB, it's just shit writing (if the author doesn't provide a satisfactory explanation of the structural nuances that caused County A's leadership to be so consistently poor).

That's a good addition.

And your point about bad writing is also very pertinent. Alternate history is fiction after all. History is different. It often does provide a satisfactory explanation of the event but unlike a TL author, has no obligation or pressure to make it obvious or simple. And with history the onus is on the reader to discover, rather than the author to present.

 

[Lascaris]

Even as late as 1957-58 was head and shoulders above all the middle powers in the world and was set to make the decisions that would define its hard and a fair bit of it's soft power for the next ~30 years and uniformly made the wrong ones. Even success stories were arrived at by poor means which detracted from their potential.

No Dassault and no De Gaulle either.

 

[Lascaris]

Monarch is bitten by herbivore monkey and dies. In country where no native monkeys exist. Just saying.

 

[Comte de Geneve]

To be the probverbial wet rag, if something actually happened it can not be ASB, unless the aforementioned Bats did arrive at Roswell in 1947 and have been distorting our history ever since without being discovered. Come to think of it, that might explain our post-1947 history. Should Project Blue Book be renamed Project Bat Book?

 

[Riain]

No Dassault and no De Gaulle either.

Not that the Lightning, Harrier, Buccaneer and/or TSR2 were going to be the Mirage III/5/F1, but Japan wanted to buy the SR.53 and SR.177 and Britain didn't help and the British government representative to West Germany was lobbying that they NOT buy the Lightning.

It doesn't take an iron willed genius to not make the mistakes Britain did in 1957-68, just a touch less dogmatism.

 

[Aghasverov]

To be the probverbial wet rag, if something actually happened it can not be ASB, unless the aforementioned Bats did arrive at Roswell in 1947 and have been distorting our history ever since without being discovered. Come to think of it, that might explain our post-1947 history. Should Project Blue Book be renamed Project Bat Book?

Me personally, I think time-travelling agents from the future came back and screwed around with the continuum, leaving us with the mess we have now of course, we would never know....

 

[TheBalkanizer]

That Germany got so screwed over. Any other timeline and they would be a superpower still. If someone had another country in a tl get screwed over like OTL Germany it would be accused of an ASB level screw.

 

[Wendell]

Otto Skorzeny's rescue of Mussolini.

 

[TRH]

That Germany got so screwed over. Any other timeline and they would be a superpower still. If someone had another country in a tl get screwed over like OTL Germany it would be accused of an ASB level screw.

That's far more of an indictment of how quick everyone is to sling the term ASB around. It was extremely unfortunate. Impossibly so? If Godzilla stomped through Berlin just as it was about to win WW1, leveled it, and then stomped off into the Baltic never to be seen again, then we'd be talking.

 

[Titanium49]

ok, keeping with the falling,

WWII: Gunner fell 22,000 feet WITHOUT a parachute and survived

Gunner fell 22,000 feet and survived: Ranked among the luckiest people in the world, Alan E. Magee survived a free fall of almost four miles from a B-17 bomber during a raid in WWII.

www.warhistoryonline.com

No chute, and fell thru a roof.
From 22,000 feet

I thought he fell into a tank of Coca-Cola and survived because Coca-Cola is a soft drink.

 

[Titanium49]

Angus Monfries kicking a goal with 1 minute to go in Showdown XXXV.

 

[David Flin]

That Germany got so screwed over. Any other timeline and they would be a superpower still. If someone had another country in a tl get screwed over like OTL Germany it would be accused of an ASB level screw.

Well, when in 1914, it decides: "I know, let's go to war with the Rest of the World in arms against us, with only Austria-Hungary as "reliable" allies, and do our best to piss off neutrals like the USA," negative consequences are likely.

When it does it again in 1939, you begin to suspect that its getting screwed over was the inevitable consequence of some less-than-optimal diplomacy.

Frankly, given the pre-war decisions in both cases, and the diplomacy during the build-up and during the actual fighting, the end outcome (if not necessarily the means by which the outcome was achieved) was pretty much as one might expect.

Honestly, in WWI, pissing off Britain to ensure it joined up with the Entente pretty much guaranteed that it was going to lose any long war. As for WWII, getting into a war with Britain (and its access to manpower and resources that Germany couldn't hope to get within a hundred miles of touching), the USA (with its industrial muscle and resources dwarfing anything Germany has) and the USSR (with its manpower reserves and vast distances buggering up the logistics for any attack on it) all at the same time was unwise.

Germany screwed itself over.

 

[HexWargamer]

Well the British Empire was dead the instance the USA joined the war == no way could the Brits. ever justify keeping control.
Then, ending WW2 almost (if not actually) bankrupt, with no money to pay for it, the Government sets up a comprehensive welfare state, free unlimited healthcare to all and national (Ponzi Scheme) pensions. To squander a bit more cash they didn't have they then nationalised the railways, heavy (steel) industry and coal mining. Waking up to the fact that they were going to come up short of funds they did the obvious - nationalise the Bank of England and 'print it', which meant inflation and the end of Sterling as a 'reserve' courancy (in 1940 you got 4 dollars to the pound, by 1985 it was 1:1). Throw in 50 years of post-war rise of the trade unions, heavy regulation, high taxes and successive UK Governments that indulged in the a 'soviet style' control of the economy i.e. suppression of innovation by regulation and the removal of incentives by taxation ... the 'Brain Drain' of the 1960's just being one symptom of the broken economy ... and WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ?

As far as the British aero-industry goes, IMHO the rot set in the instance they nationalised Frank Whittle's Power Jets (he ended up emigrating to USA, same as any other Brit. that wanted to make anything post war ..)

 

[Retro_Reaction]

If someone were to do a TL with some OTL events, you would get the 'that's ASB!'
This thread lists those events.
Like Molotov surviving many failures, and then thriving, in Stalin USSR.
Tesla ending up near destitute.
And so on.

What’s the saying “Truth is often stranger than fiction, because fiction needs to be possible, truth does not”

 

[David Flin]

What’s the saying “Truth is often stranger than fiction, because fiction needs to be possible, truth does not”

It's a peeve of mine about the use of the term ASB to refer to the unlikely.

By definition, ASB refers to the physically impossible. Confederate soldiers having never empty powder bags and minie balls; Me109 having no fuel or ammunition constraints; Earth having one tenth of it's actual gravity for purposes of developing a moonbase; and so on.

Not unlikely - physically impossible.

Damnit, I can spin a dozen and more real tales about my life that are implausible, but by definition possible (the last of which being diagnosed as terminally ill in November 2019, and pronounced cured in January 2021).

If these nonsensical suggestions of things that were, in context, merely unlikely, get trotted out as examples of ASB, I will start trotting out some personal ones.

That noise you hear, that's the sound of the creator of the term spinning in her grave. Well, technically not, as she was cremated and buried at sea, but the principle remains.

 

[CalBear]

To be fair that was about 2011, well before Leicester city won the premiership and the guy who posted that never got told off, lol. But I humbly apologize (more than Trump ever did, 😏).

So you made a current politics post. Another member pointed it out to you and your response was to double down?

Wrong.

Formal Warning for trolling/current politics outside of Chat.