I remember AlternateHistoryHub did a video of "What if Russia never existed?". He mainly covered stuff that would be recent to the POD, basically saying "Oh, I'm not gonna bother trying to cover what the world today would look like without Russia existing. It would be completely unrecognizable."
What PoDs Would Create An Unrecognizable World?
- Thread starter Zyobot
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- before 1900 pod pre-1900
A POD in which England and France keep being disunited throughout much of their history, America is discovered 20 or 40 years after it was actually discovered and Italy unites in the late medieval period would make our world entirely different.
Should have phrased it better, but yeah, It did say he would be a great conqueror over a large territory than people nowadays hypothesize is over the entire Subcontinent, But my point still stands, A United Indian Subcontinent would completely change the world history
Quite a feat since the Antikythera Device was not invented until a hundred years after Archimedes was dead. And he died at SEVENTY-FIVE. He’ll be dead inside of a decade even if the Romans didn’t kill him. There would be no amazing breakthroughs in technology even if he was the super-genius pop-history claims he was. Which, to be clear, there’s no evidence for.
I kind of echo the point a lot of others have made that super distant PODs can get increasingly unwieldly since you'd be force to extrapolate far outside a parameter that's tolerable for an alternate history story per se. That said, there are plenty of divergence points in early modern history that could result in a radically different modern day, and my first instinct is to center such things around the Age of Exploration, where some new variable you've created can spiral off a divergent world without making it all up out of whole cloth.
For example, when @Miranda Brawner was talking about rebooting the Honor and Respect ASB scenario on a recognizable version of Earth one of my suggestions was to have some of the major ideologies of that project develop and cohere in India, with the contact with Europeans serving as a vector for them to spread and evolve, with several of the TL's more exotic ideologies being historical offshoots or footnotes arising as a result of that contact with an alien political dichotomy and value system. Alternate poles of complex culture in the vein of @DValdron's Green Antarctica are an excellent way to create huge butterflies without completely alienating the reader. As @Thande has ably demonstrated incredibly small divergences can result in a modern day that's both radically alien from current sensibilities but still within the ability of the reader to parse.
For example, when @Miranda Brawner was talking about rebooting the Honor and Respect ASB scenario on a recognizable version of Earth one of my suggestions was to have some of the major ideologies of that project develop and cohere in India, with the contact with Europeans serving as a vector for them to spread and evolve, with several of the TL's more exotic ideologies being historical offshoots or footnotes arising as a result of that contact with an alien political dichotomy and value system. Alternate poles of complex culture in the vein of @DValdron's Green Antarctica are an excellent way to create huge butterflies without completely alienating the reader. As @Thande has ably demonstrated incredibly small divergences can result in a modern day that's both radically alien from current sensibilities but still within the ability of the reader to parse.
I gavs it up cause really it seemed extremely ASBAn even bleaker past 150 years than IOTL... that's... sort of impressive
one of my personal favourite ideas is that after their success at the Allia the Celts completely raze Rome, any survivors are enslaved and those who made it out take refuge in other parts of Italy rather than rebuild. Rome is stopped dead in its tracks before it could even conquer the Latin League, let be the rest of Italy or the entire Mediterranean World. A single POD that guarantees no Roman Empire, no Romance languages, no Christianity or Islam, etc.
The problem with these early PODs though is that it quickly becomes a fantasy world where you have to choose everything that happens instead... Like does someone else in Italy step in to unite the peninsula, who and how? And how does the early end of Rome affect Carthage and the Greeks? It's a load of work and within the first 120 years (around the time of the 1st Punic War) European history will be drastically altered already, which down the line will alter all of world history. It's basically impossible to write an extensive timeline about it.
The problem with these early PODs though is that it quickly becomes a fantasy world where you have to choose everything that happens instead... Like does someone else in Italy step in to unite the peninsula, who and how? And how does the early end of Rome affect Carthage and the Greeks? It's a load of work and within the first 120 years (around the time of the 1st Punic War) European history will be drastically altered already, which down the line will alter all of world history. It's basically impossible to write an extensive timeline about it.
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The problem is that really ancient PODs change so much the course of history that a lot of concepts relatively fixed and given as assumed by writers of TLs with later PODs have to be redefined. The author must study in the minimal details hundreds if not thousands of topics just to know what and how to write for the TL. To not speak about the greater problem of all, toponomastics. If your POD is in ancient history, it may alter migrations, linguistic domination and language evolution on a gigantic scale. This is not simply "build a new Romance language", which is difficult on its own, it's "build a new language based on an ancient language of which we have archeological evidence in the best case, or none in the worst, or maybe on the proto-proto-form of an ancient language that may have descendants today that some group of obscure linguists tried to reconstruct". And then, if you want to get to present days, you have thousands of years of evolution to cover and decide. It's hell. In facts while there are various great Ancient TLs, some with concept you may like, they all get abandoned before long. A project that may interest you is the TL Not My Heifer by a guy pretty good at archeolinguistics that was unfortunately banned for circumstances unrelated to the TL which I can't remember, it revolves about a different vector of penetration of the Indo-European migrations that set up a gigantic crowd of butterflies in language, culture, technology...everything around the Earth. A thread that you may particularly like is the brainstorm thread for the TL, where a lot of general worldbuilding ideas were debated, even beyond the at the time current focus of the TL. It's really interesting.
Isn't this just a Star Wars on Earth map? The Global Empire/Republic is an Empire/Republic expy, "Severus IX" is Palpatine, "Il Pater" is Darth Vader, the Alliance for the Republic is a Rebel Alliance equivalent, the Hunn are the Hutts, the Manus Empire is the Empire of the Hand led by *Thrawn, the Iroquis Ascendancy is the Chiss Ascendancy, the Hive should be the Ssi-Ruuk, the Maori are the Yuuzhan Vong, the only parallels I'm missing are the Yuxtecs and the Karelians. I suppose the Yuxtecs are the Mandalorians?
I disagree. I think the Anglo-French union would collapse in one or two generations, even if it lasts that doesn't guarantee that the Plantagenets would then go on to successfully conquer the rest of Europe.
Deleted member 90949
Here is another unrecognizable world, but this one is ASB w/magic. It is about a necromancer named Korilethe who travels to the New World and founds an empire.
One thing I notice is that everybody seems to think China is inevitable. I mean seriously, have you ever seen an althistory world map without China? They are really rare.
I think the Karelians are Mandalorians and the Hive is Kamino.
One thing I notice is that everybody seems to think China is inevitable. I mean seriously, have you ever seen an althistory world map without China? They are really rare.
The Yuxtecs are the Ssi-Ruuk, as confirmed by the creator.
I think the Karelians are Mandalorians and the Hive is Kamino.
If Enlightenment and Liberalism can be strangled, that the Old Regime be maintained forever would not be so rare. At least it would be at the same level of probability and butterflies. So possibly ending the enlightenment and liberalism would keep the Old Regime until there is some crisis that it cannot solve. (China and Russia show that the Old Regime can be perfectly maintained indefinitely unless there is an external crisis that destroys it).
Vastly different perhaps, but I think with a POD that recent, there would still be recognizable elements...
Cicero wrote about Archimedes making a mechanical device to measure the planets and solar system around 212 b.c.. The one found on the wreck was a later version. Archimedes died in 212 b.c. The mechanics would have been related to Archimedes ideas.
Which isn't what you said. The Antikythera mechanism was already a developed version of what existed in Archimedes's time. There's no reason to think that some septagenarian surviving a couple more years would produce anything of substance, certainly not enough to create an unrecognizable world apart from the butterflies of any POD so far back.
The Americas have a full suite of domesticatable animals comparable to the Old World, resulting in completely different civilizations there. Climactic butterflies already affect the Old World, and the Columbian exchange is done on "equal" terms. A world like that would be very unrecognizeable.
Actually, if he had survived and not died, he would probably have been in Roman hands for a while. He would have been able to explain many of the things which he had done, like the steam cannon, the burning mirrors, and many of the devices which were used against the Romans. There were a variety of devices like an astronomical globe, a mechanical planetary diagram which were not completely understood. The Romans would have an explanation of how the things worked.
We still don't completely understand how he was able to set boats on fire with bronze mirrors. The ability to concentrate sunlight for power was not developed until 1866. The ability to start fires, cook things with sunlight, heat water, and similar things could have been very useful.
I can imagine a world where Archimedes lives for a few more years and creates the basis for early concentrating solar power based on shining bronze. Maybe something similar speculum metal which is a mix of tin and copper.
We still don't completely understand how he was able to set boats on fire with bronze mirrors. The ability to concentrate sunlight for power was not developed until 1866. The ability to start fires, cook things with sunlight, heat water, and similar things could have been very useful.
I can imagine a world where Archimedes lives for a few more years and creates the basis for early concentrating solar power based on shining bronze. Maybe something similar speculum metal which is a mix of tin and copper.
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An ASB one that would be both recent(if it happened to be possible) and would affect the distant past for some major butterflies(plus being kinda cliché) is time travel.
But I dont mean the classic "I'm gonna shoot Hitler" rogue traveler or "God sends the US to the past" kind of ISOT, I mean something like the Pax Romana comic(where the Vatican had the machine and was desperate enough to try conquering the Roman Empire with WWII technology) with a organized group or nation taking the butterfly effect to it's logical limits by trying to mold the future to their liking. Even more interesting is if it uses a "realistic" type of time travel(at least as much realistic that concept can be) like from the movie Primer or the anime Steins Gate.
Totally unrecognizable world by default, it's not even funny.
But I dont mean the classic "I'm gonna shoot Hitler" rogue traveler or "God sends the US to the past" kind of ISOT, I mean something like the Pax Romana comic(where the Vatican had the machine and was desperate enough to try conquering the Roman Empire with WWII technology) with a organized group or nation taking the butterfly effect to it's logical limits by trying to mold the future to their liking. Even more interesting is if it uses a "realistic" type of time travel(at least as much realistic that concept can be) like from the movie Primer or the anime Steins Gate.
Totally unrecognizable world by default, it's not even funny.