What PoDs Would Create An Unrecognizable World?

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."
Is he still going
 
The Romans would have an explanation of how the things worked.

According to prof.Luciano Russo there was an extremely limited scientific revolution in the Hellenic World that died and it had to be reborn!
This POD might be enough to maintain it.
 
We still don't completely understand how he was able to set boats on fire with bronze mirrors.
According to the Mythbusters that tested the feat it would indeed generate a lot of heat but not enough to burn a ship, however the reflected light was so strong that if the event did indeed take place it most likely blinded the crew and caused some skin damage which in turn could cause them to set their own ship on fire by accident.
So even if it cant burn the opponent directly it still can incapacitate the tripulation at very least and in the best case scenario cause the whole enemy navy to be set on fire indirectly, thus making everyone believe it can burn ships.
 
I read Adrian Tchaikosky's Doors of Eden, which featured an alt Neanderthal world where they had wiped out all other human species, however still can't function in super large groups. They're technologically advanced, strong, but still have gaps in what they can and can't do. There are no cities and a more evenly distributed population.

I've also played with the idea of a world where 98% of everyone is on the Autism scale and that is the norm. They are doing better because they are less able to buy into demogoges, false advertising, and group think.

An "autism world" would probably be slightly more advanced technologically, but incredibly conservative socially. And very prone to wars.

Hm. Reminds me of the pastoralist world scenario.
 
About a surviving Archimedes:
A main POD of a timeline I'm writing(mostly focused on America but with lots of european butterflies) is Rome being hellenized much earlier due to more contact with Magna Graecia.
Something like this would make the greeks happy about being conquered by the romans? No, but if they saw the romans like they saw the macedonians or other hellenics they didnt like rather than straight up barbarians they would have had a much better chance of being integrated. Archimedes for one might not have gone batshit crazy and went as far as trying to single handely destroy the roman fleet by himself thinking they were like orcs hellbent on destroying the greek culture.
Thus the hellenic proto-scientific revolution(if you believe the "The Forgotten Revolution" narrative) might continue not just because of the survival of one man but also cause the whole cultural transition went more smoothly.
 
An "autism world" would probably be slightly more advanced technologically, but incredibly conservative socially. And very prone to wars.
Why prone to wars? Wars, I would argue, require a good deal of social cohesion to get off the ground--if there's not very much of an "us," it's hard to fight "them."
 
An "autism world"
Not gonna lie, I love the idea of a neurodivergent TL
I think one where about half the population entering the spectrum might be good, it'd be more than enough to make society take it very serious while at same time having enough neuronormative people to not be just a role swap and it'd give autists a better chance of surviving in the earlier stages of nationbuilding
Even thought about asking a ASB WI on the forum about that but it was post-1900 so I felt it would fall into flamebait
 
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Go way back:

Australian aborigines develop agriculture, circa 40K BCE. Even if things develop more slowly than OTL, hot damn!
 

According to prof.Luciano Russo there was an extremely limited scientific revolution in the Hellenic World that died and it had to be reborn!
This POD might be enough to maintain it.
I mean after reading some reviews he seems to relie almost completely on conjecture sense so many records frome this time period are lost so its basically impossible to prove or disprove his theory but I am sertenly skeptical, for a theory as bold as that he really needs stronger support then this.
 
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.
I don't really agree, literally any POD will end up causing long term major divergences if you don't railroad events to still be like OTL. There is nothing special about this one.
 
What about a scenario whereby the monotheistic religions don't get all anti-gay but rather have a greco-roman approach to sexuality?

Over the centuries even the stigma about the passive make partner dissolves.

Imagine how this would impact politics and diplomacy with things such as women's rights, women in the workplace, and female world leaders. Imagine how it would affect diplomacy with personal unions between monarchs/kingdoms. Imagine culture, with famous writers being 'out.' Imagine how technology would be more advanced if people like Alan Turing weren't persecuted.

Regards,

Northstar
 
Depends on how you define unrecognizable:

Generally, any significant meddling with important religions or philosophies ought to do it.

China without Confucius

Buddhism isn’t founded

Buddhism never spreads into the Sinosphere

Assyria crushes Judah or doesn’t crush Samaria

Hinduism doesn’t develop the Varnas

Christianity doesn’t become widespread

Christianity fragments nationalistically more

Islam remains in the Arabian Peninsula

Islam goes further West or less Far East

No Calvinists
 
Instead of giant dinosaurs, giant mammals which are wiped out by an asteroid. Instead of human mammals, one ends up with lizard people living in the warm/hot countries of the world.

Ogadai Khan does not die when he did, Western Europe is destroyed and taken over by the Mongols temporarily.

Jesus's disciples are killed along with him, Christianity is strangled and never becomes a religion.

Disease in the Americas mainly affects the whites rather then the Native Americans, making it's conquest much harder.

No WW1 somehow, meaning no fascism/Nazism/Communism in power, and colonialism lasts longer-as does Anti-Antisemitism in Europe with no Holocaust to show what it leads to.

A Tsar as strict as Stalin, leading to a very unpleasant Tsarist state.

Hitler dies in early 1939, possibly stopping WW2 from breaking out.

MacAuther uses nukes in China in the Korean War.

Either a disused Chinese mine is not reopened in 2019, or some lab workers in China take proper precauations in their lab, and Covid 19 does not escape to cause injury, death and chaos all over the world.
 
A Tsar as strict as Stalin, leading to a very unpleasant Tsarist state.

Hitler dies in early 1939, possibly stopping WW2 from breaking out.

MacAuther uses nukes in China in the Korean War.

Either a disused Chinese mine is not reopened in 2019, or some lab workers in China take proper precauations in their lab, and Covid 19 does not escape to cause injury, death and chaos all over the world.
Thanks for the PoDs. However, I think the post-1900 ones, while catalysts for a much different world, wouldn't generate an unrecognizable TL (nuking China notwithstanding, perhaps). Modern national and cultural identities would still exist, and the defining events and characteristics of Modernity from before each of the PoDs--the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and so on--have still set in.

I don't think your last one quite qualifies, either, at least not in the sense of creating a bizarre world that OTL observers would blink incomprehensibly at. It may have massive divergent affects way farther down the line, but those take a while to compound. In the short to mid-term, history won't diverge nearly as much as if the Mongol Conquests or rise of Rome were butterflied, for example.
 
In the short to mid-term, history won't diverge nearly as much as if the Mongol Conquests or rise of Rome were butterflied, for example.
In the short term those wouldn't have counted either. Time increases unrecognizability. A world where the Nazis won might be recognizable to us, barely. But in three hundred years it would be unrecognizable. But as we live in our own time, I have to agree with you.
 
In the short term those wouldn't have counted either. Time increases unrecognizability. A world where the Nazis won might be recognizable to us, barely. But in three hundred years it would be unrecognizable. But as we live in our own time, I have to agree with you.
That's what I meant, yes. Which is to say, I'm looking for PoDs that'd create an unrecognizable world from the perspective of someone living in the twenty-first century, at the least.

No Covid-19 leading an exceedingly different world centuries or millennia down the line, though? That could very well be, with similar being true for the other post-1900 PoDs put forth here.
 

Thande

Donor
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.
Thanks for the shout-out; I should say that my main inspiration in this was Tony Jones' timelines (especially Cliveless World) which similarly show just how different the world could end up. Whereas in LTTW the main 'cold war' ideology divide is over identity and in OTL it was over economic systems, in Cliveless World it's over privacy and personal freedom vs Big Brother authoritarianism in the name of security. All of these are discussion points in all three timelines, but which one becomes the defining axis of modern history is not inevitable.
 
Thanks for the shout-out; I should say that my main inspiration in this was Tony Jones' timelines (especially Cliveless World) which similarly show just how different the world could end up. Whereas in LTTW the main 'cold war' ideology divide is over identity and in OTL it was over economic systems, in Cliveless World it's over privacy and personal freedom vs Big Brother authoritarianism in the name of security. All of these are discussion points in all three timelines, but which one becomes the defining axis of modern history is not inevitable.
While in Gurkani Alam, it is religious tolerance vs religious fanaticism with atheism/Freethinker ideas as a lesser third force.
 

Thande

Donor
While in Gurkani Alam, it is religious tolerance vs religious fanaticism with atheism/Freethinker ideas as a lesser third force.
Yes indeed. I felt that one was slightly less convincing, but your mileage may vary; regardless, like Cliveless World it's another excellent example of developing lesser-known ideas and technologies from OTL and putting them centre stage.
 
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