Voices of Doomsday
- Thread starter Geon
- Start date
IIRC, in this timeline LBJ cancelled the 1964 elections. Which would lead to his impeachment, removal from office, and prison time.
On a related note, is this timeline over? It's a great set of stories, but if it's done then I can remove it from my bookmarks.
Good. Please take your time, RL comes first. We will be waiting for you.
Oh, I know, I'm just making snarky comments, as per my usual methods.
The Rat Pack Plans a Party
Geon
Donor
Thank you all for your patience with me. As a reward, here is a small snippet. Please enjoy! And thank you again for all the kind comments.
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In Las Vegas a somber group of celebrities, guests, and hotel staff gathered around a civil defense radio and listened to the local announcer once again advise everyone to stay in their shelters until radiation levels were judged low enough to emerge. As of yet Nevada, shielded by the Sierras was not in danger of any radioactive fallout from the West Coast strikes but people were still advised to stay under cover for the next few days.
Amidst the deep gloom felt by those in the shelter there had been one or two bright moments, the arrival of Judy and her family, and the arrival of Jerry’s wife and children. It seemed Las Vegas was an island of safety in the midst of this war. In fact many refugees were now starting to trickle into Las Vegas mostly fleeing eastward from the major cities on the West Coast. A few were survivors of the San Diego and San Francisco attacks. Miraculously Los Angeles was still untouched. Whether it would remain so no one knew.
For many of those in the Rat Pack there was a sense of grief and loss as they remembered New York City. Many of them had roots there. Many had started their careers there in nightclubs and theaters that were now burning rubble. All of them had friends and loved ones in that city and knew they would never see some of those friends again.
Yet in the midst of tragedy one man was already making future plans. Frank Sinatra was beginning drawing up plans for what he was calling now The New Beginning Bash. Peter Lawford would write later:
“For Frank the best medicine for the losses we had gone through was to do what we did best. Entertain. At one point that night I asked him how he could plan something like The New Beginning Bash given what we had just gone through.
“Frank looked at me and said quite bluntly, ‘Pete, there are a couple of reasons for doing what I’m doing. First, there are a lot of folks out there who right now are wondering if there’s going to be a tomorrow for them and their kids. We as entertainers need to let them know we believe there will be a tomorrow for all of us. If we don’t start believing in that simple fact then we may as well stay in these holes and die. Secondly, by planning something like this I can keep my sanity and try not to think too hard of the people that didn’t make it.
“I couldn’t argue with Frank’s logic. Gradually that night and over the next few weeks I and the rest of the pack would start to work with Frank on his dream.” (from Peter Lawford, My Life as a Rat.)
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In Las Vegas a somber group of celebrities, guests, and hotel staff gathered around a civil defense radio and listened to the local announcer once again advise everyone to stay in their shelters until radiation levels were judged low enough to emerge. As of yet Nevada, shielded by the Sierras was not in danger of any radioactive fallout from the West Coast strikes but people were still advised to stay under cover for the next few days.
Amidst the deep gloom felt by those in the shelter there had been one or two bright moments, the arrival of Judy and her family, and the arrival of Jerry’s wife and children. It seemed Las Vegas was an island of safety in the midst of this war. In fact many refugees were now starting to trickle into Las Vegas mostly fleeing eastward from the major cities on the West Coast. A few were survivors of the San Diego and San Francisco attacks. Miraculously Los Angeles was still untouched. Whether it would remain so no one knew.
For many of those in the Rat Pack there was a sense of grief and loss as they remembered New York City. Many of them had roots there. Many had started their careers there in nightclubs and theaters that were now burning rubble. All of them had friends and loved ones in that city and knew they would never see some of those friends again.
Yet in the midst of tragedy one man was already making future plans. Frank Sinatra was beginning drawing up plans for what he was calling now The New Beginning Bash. Peter Lawford would write later:
“For Frank the best medicine for the losses we had gone through was to do what we did best. Entertain. At one point that night I asked him how he could plan something like The New Beginning Bash given what we had just gone through.
“Frank looked at me and said quite bluntly, ‘Pete, there are a couple of reasons for doing what I’m doing. First, there are a lot of folks out there who right now are wondering if there’s going to be a tomorrow for them and their kids. We as entertainers need to let them know we believe there will be a tomorrow for all of us. If we don’t start believing in that simple fact then we may as well stay in these holes and die. Secondly, by planning something like this I can keep my sanity and try not to think too hard of the people that didn’t make it.
“I couldn’t argue with Frank’s logic. Gradually that night and over the next few weeks I and the rest of the pack would start to work with Frank on his dream.” (from Peter Lawford, My Life as a Rat.)
I'm pretty sure just being in Liverpool would've been bad enough for them.
Allot famous People died, either do bombs or never born because there parents died in War
next Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov and Beatles, join David Bowie, the Who and Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd or members of Monty Python or Ridley Scott as London and Other Cities in Britain were vaporized.
That Tom Cruise survive the events is doubtful, in October 62 he was a baby in Syracuse, N.Y. middle of nuclear fallout of east coast strikes.
In france there will be no more: Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Paul Sartre and others
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Gabin are lucky they making a Movie at french Coast as WWIII happen, same for Alan Delon if he was in Nice at same time.
on the question what about Star Trek ?
Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy, Jackson DeForest Kelley, William Shatner, James Doohan, George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, Walter Koenig were around Hollywood as the War happen
were Nichelle Nichols was is unclear to me, either She was in L.A. or Chicago in worst case in New York during the nuclear Attack!
Star Trek would be very interesting concept in this TL
About future Exploration ship with multinational Crew to discover new world and new Civilization, in context of aftermath of Nuclear War.
Giving viewer a optimist hope that Mankind learn his lesson of Nuclear War.
next Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov and Beatles, join David Bowie, the Who and Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd or members of Monty Python or Ridley Scott as London and Other Cities in Britain were vaporized.
That Tom Cruise survive the events is doubtful, in October 62 he was a baby in Syracuse, N.Y. middle of nuclear fallout of east coast strikes.
In france there will be no more: Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Paul Sartre and others
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Gabin are lucky they making a Movie at french Coast as WWIII happen, same for Alan Delon if he was in Nice at same time.
on the question what about Star Trek ?
Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy, Jackson DeForest Kelley, William Shatner, James Doohan, George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, Walter Koenig were around Hollywood as the War happen
were Nichelle Nichols was is unclear to me, either She was in L.A. or Chicago in worst case in New York during the nuclear Attack!
Star Trek would be very interesting concept in this TL
About future Exploration ship with multinational Crew to discover new world and new Civilization, in context of aftermath of Nuclear War.
Giving viewer a optimist hope that Mankind learn his lesson of Nuclear War.
If Gene Rodenberry lives, then there's a good chance for Star Trek to happen. But flying butterflies pretty much guarantees different actors playing at least some of the parts.
(I would be interested in speculation as to who gets cast, but have limited knowledge of actors of the time period outside Star Trek.)
(I would be interested in speculation as to who gets cast, but have limited knowledge of actors of the time period outside Star Trek.)
Aaaaaand, O'Alexis' parents, living in Burgundy, would survive, leading to the birth of O'Alexis somewhere during the 1990s and ending with O'Alexis writing a message on a 'What If Doomsday Never Occured?' TL on AlternateHistory Discussion Forum.
In a nutshell, I'll still be born ITTL, and it makes me happy.
Lost Freeway
Banned
I would chalk it up to extreme stress on Johnson's part. After all, no US president has ever faced a humanitarian crisis like this.
Geon
Donor
Aaaaaand, O'Alexis' parents, living in Burgundy, would survive, leading to the birth of O'Alexis somewhere during the 1990s and ending with O'Alexis writing a message on a 'What If Doomsday Never Occured?' TL on AlternateHistory Discussion Forum.
In a nutshell, I'll still be born ITTL, and it makes me happy.
O'Alexis, the good news is yes you would be born and survive. The bad news (according to Amerigo) is that you would grow up in an authoritarian dictatorship. The surviving French government in Amerigo's TL passed draconian measures to maintain order and it was not until the 1990's (someone correct me if I am wrong here) until free elections occurred.
If you think that the refugee debate is bad in OTL look at Amerigo's TL to see how bad it could get. Survivors from Eastern Europe and Germany were being shot trying to cross the Rhine bridges which were blown up to prevent people from entering France!
As a matter of fact - now that I think about it - its' likely you'd have the immigration problem in reverse in this timeline. I could easily see people from Canada and the United States who had the means trying to get south into Mexico or if they could to the other Latin American nations. Amerigo never dealt much with Latin American politics - although we know by the end of the TL that Brazil was a nuclear armed power. But I could easily see many Americans looking southward given that the economies and cities of Mexico and several Latin American nations are still intact.
Aaaaaand, O'Alexis' parents, living in Burgundy, would survive, leading to the birth of O'Alexis somewhere during the 1990s and ending with O'Alexis writing a message on a 'What If Doomsday Never Occured?' TL on AlternateHistory Discussion Forum.
In a nutshell, I'll still be born ITTL, and it makes me happy.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Your post actually raises a fairly interesting question about the butterfly effect and its magnitude in such a large departure from original events. Certainly everyone already born or conceived by late October 1962 will be around. Beyond that, many will not be and the effect will grow the further out one gets from 1962. People will have different lives. Many lives, of course, will have ended prematurely. But as lives change, some sets of parents will not meet. By the 1990s, some 30 years later, I think that the effect should be pronounced, to the point where most people born then in OTL won't be. If your parents met due to a happenstance meeting, the odds of one being born in an alternate timeline would be low.
Of course, this is a purely rationalist approach to such matters that hinges on probability and straightforward cause and effect. It's certainly not a romantic or theological view of things and there are certainly approaches within those frameworks which might come up with a different conclusion about whether you would be born.
But in any case, it's an interesting question to think about, a "meta" question of alternate history.
Geon
Donor
In an earlier post in the story I try to list all the major cities and areas that were hit. Included were Oakland, Seattle, San Diego, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston.
I wasn't expecting these anwsers but, hey, thanks.
I forgot an important rule: the butterflies. When I wrote this I was ultra confident that ITTL, I and my parents would still be alive. But with the butterflies, it's another story like Apollo explained: my parents would be alive but maybe not me. ("Meta" style)
Geon, I forgot/haven't seen that part of the TL (I believe...) where France goes into 'La Grande Dictature' mode. Can somebody points the post to me? I need to re-read this part so badly.
Didn't Omaha Nebraska and Colorado Springs get hit also? Plus pretty much everything in Alaska.