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Realistic *For All Time

dystopia universalEmpire

xsampa

Well-known member
What would a realistic reconstruction of For All Time have to do to make it *dystopian but not overwhelmingly grimdark, or at least add plausibility?

Perhaps an earlier POD would help accumulate dystopianess over time (e.g more colonized countries or earlier world wars), like @Ephraim Ben Raphael’s Separated at Birth while giving enough divergences to make TTL feel alien, not just dystopic. A POD in the early 19th or even 18th centuries could help “set” the dystopic tone for literal centuries.

Also, in regards to plausibility, there at least has to be temporary pushback in regards to major catastrphes like the SinoSoviet War, much like how the devastation of WW1 lead to the LoN even though that failed, and *some sort of global communications to prevent things from going pearshaped is essential.

The lack of coverage of the economy and culture in general in the original grates me- the cultural changes caused by migration and the constant conflict could be interesting to read about?

Also new ideologies like *Liberationism (Ba'athism but for the third world mixed with Liberation Theology) could add value
 
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What would a realistic reconstruction of For All Time have to do to make it *dystopian but not overwhelmingly grimdark, or at least add plausibility?

I mean, the whole charm (such as it was) of For All Time was that it just kept getting worse and worse with little regard for the plausible, so to me this seems like asking "How would you go about making a version of meringue that was less sweet, or maybe a little salty".

Your point about an earlier PoD allowing dystopia to just keep building is a good one--if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to come up with a dystopic world, I'd probably go for something like GURPS's Nergal, where monotheism and the alphabet get smothered in the cradle and human sacrifice and absolutism is the norm for human societies.
 
I mean, the whole charm (such as it was) of For All Time was that it just kept getting worse and worse with little regard for the plausible, so to me this seems like asking "How would you go about making a version of meringue that was less sweet, or maybe a little salty".

Your point about an earlier PoD allowing dystopia to just keep building is a good one--if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to come up with a dystopic world, I'd probably go for something like GURPS's Nergal, where monotheism and the alphabet get smothered in the cradle and human sacrifice and absolutism is the norm for human societies.
Maybe with enough time, a true World Government similar to the entity mentioned at the end of Inferno Averted: an Alternate Whoverse by QuantumBranching on DeviantArt could emerge, a true *post-racial (if only due to the sheer number of *Asians and Africans) totalitarian Universal Empire that proclaims itself the culmination of History Itself under the High Council for All-Humanity.

The Universal Empire would have no compunction of nuking rebelling provinces since it has literally entire continents to spare

A timeline that realistically culminates in a totalitarian true world government that lasts long enough to colonize the stars...
 
Basically the monotheism + alphabet being prevented thing is a side-effect of the Assyrians smashing Phoenicia and...just sort of never losing stuff, which leads to them becoming the model for most societies. Since the Assyrian empire was pretty nasty in a lot of ways, this isn't pleasant.
@John7755 said the empire had basically some characteristics of Fascism and a rather fanatical worship of The Great Gods
In general, Assurbanipal is much more merciful than his predecessors. In general, Assyrian kings were extremely fearsome in all manner, harsh, judgmental, zealous and extremely bold. Assyrian kings bragged about extreme acts of punishment and destruction. Take Shalmaneser I, who claimed to ground humans into mush and to have smote millions in tides of fury or Assurnasirpal II who wrote constantly in his inscriptions about setting children on fire in enemy cities and he even goes on to describe the stench of burning humans whom he mass executed in Syrian cities as retribution for their sins. Assyrian punishments were noted as fearsome, even for Bronze Age and Iron age standards, revolving around flaying the skin, setting alight in fire and in then beheading the person as a trophy for Nergal, the god of punishment, looting, flaying, fire and plague. Punishment, annihilation and enslavement of enemy peoples were seen as religious duties and acts made to the Great Gods, who instructed Assyria with the task of completion of Duranki, a complex mission of world conquest and 'rehabilitation' of the world through agriculture and through annihilation, enslavement and conquest of other peoples.
 
I mean, the whole charm (such as it was) of For All Time was that it just kept getting worse and worse with little regard for the plausible, so to me this seems like asking "How would you go about making a version of meringue that was less sweet, or maybe a little salty".

Your point about an earlier PoD allowing dystopia to just keep building is a good one--if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to come up with a dystopic world, I'd probably go for something like GURPS's Nergal, where monotheism and the alphabet get smothered in the cradle and human sacrifice and absolutism is the norm for human societies.

This is a provocative question that might derail the thread, but why is monotheism necessarily a positive development? Plenty of pan- or polytheistic societies throughout history that don't practice human sacrifice.

If I was coming up with an earlier global dystopia I'd probably have eighteenth-century slave-trading colonial empires armed with contemporary weapons and surveillance technology. Not much of a science and tech historian, though, so I don't know how you'd get there.
 
Henry Wallace becomes president but is poorly prepared for the job, especially without an experienced vice president to delegate to. The war ends up taking longer due to poor delegation, poor relations with Congress, and general dysfunction. Secretary of State Cordell Hull would be the next in line for the presidency and would be qualified to do so due to his long experience at the State Department, but Hull was in poor health and ended up resigning in late 1944. It's quite possible to see World War II lasting longer at greater human and material cost for the United States, its allies, and the people of Asia.

With all the dysfunction in the United States, the United Kingdom might decide to work on Tube Alloys instead of working with the United States on the Manhattan Project. The United Kingdom played a major role in helping to move the Manhattan Project along, including by supplying the United States with uranium from Canada and the Belgian Congo. If the United Kingdom decides to keep those resources for itself that well significantly set back the United States effort, and it would result in the early nuclear arms race being between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

The United States would likely elect a more isolationist government in 1946 or 1948 (both the Wallace Democrats and traditional Republicans leaned towards isolationism), allowing the European powers to play more of a role in global affairs. However, the United Kingdom and France would both be in a weakened state, and if the Marshall Plan fails to pass it would leave them even more weak. The Soviet Union would begin to surpass them in influence and both Italy and Greece could come under communist control, just like Czechoslovakia. Winston Churchill and other hardline anti-communists would play a prominent role in the United Kingdom, and something like Operation Unthinkable could play out in the 1950s.

Eventually the Soviet Union would start to pull ahead of the United Kingdom in the nuclear arms race due to its greater resources. The United States could lose years of time working out the issues of nuclear control and ownership, issues that historically took until the mid-1950s to fully resolve. Historically the United States took the unprecedented step of creating the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, but if something like that doesn't exist there won't be the major structural advantages that helped the development of nuclear technology in the United States, especially for civilian purposes.

In our timeline the Atomic Energy Commission spent its first decade far more interested in military projects than civilian ones, viewing nuclear power as something that wouldn't be worth seriously considering until around 1980. That created a unique environment that allowed the United Kingdom and Soviet Union to become early leaders in nuclear power. In fact, the first commercial scale nuclear reactors were built at Calder Hall in the United Kingdom, and the British went on to export Magnox units to Italy and Japan for their first nuclear power plants.

The opening of Calder Hall was a big wake up call for the United States that led to Atoms for Peace and programs to help develop private nuclear power in the United States. The first commercial scale nuclear power plant in the United States, Shippingport, was actually a design that was originally intended as a propulsion unit for a never built predecessor to USS Enterprise. It used highly enriched uranium and was totally impractical as anything other than a demonstration plant, but the United States might not even have naval propulsion reactors or large amounts of highly enriched uranium that are available if it is behind in its nuclear program.

The scenario that first led the United States to develop nuclear reactor technology could play out, with the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and to some extents France all offering access to it as a reason to join their spheres of influence. More countries might choose to take up offers of nuclear assistance from the Soviet Union if the United Kingdom and France are unwilling or unable to offer anything similar, especially if the United States isn't in a position to offer an alternative. There will also be more diversity in the types of nuclear reactors without the influence of naval propulsion, perhaps leading to the popularization of designs using graphite or heavy water moderation for civilian purposes instead of instead of light water. That would get around the need to enrich uranium fuel, allowing nuclear power to be done with less need for imports and/or enrichment infrastructure.

The world was heading towards having dozens of nuclear armed states prior to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty being established in 1970, and even then it took 25 years to become permanent and nearly universal. Even if nuclear weapons aren't used, the international situation will likely be one of individualism that leads countries towards acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. It wouldn't be too difficult to acquire nuclear weapons from a research reactor or a Magnox/UNGG type reactor, especially with the lax safeguard standards that were common prior to the 1974 Indian nuclear test. As the number of nuclear weapon states increases it only further increases the chances of them being used in an international or civil conflict, with each incident only further fueling proliferation.

The resulting world would be a multipolar one having more in common with the days prior to World War II. It would also be one with more nuclear weapons and more states having nuclear weapons. Authoritarian governments could use them as a shield to prevent foreign interference and even domestic conflict. If things became destabilized, perhaps non-state actors might even acquire some nuclear weapons of their own.
 
A late 30s POD that sees France become a dictatorship independently of the Germans, the Pacific War averted (so Japan remains a dictatorship) and independent India become a dictatorship could mean a lot less democracy with it mostly restricted to the Dominions[1], the US, UK and a few small countries.
[1] Excluding Apartheid South Africa and possibly even Australia if anti-Japanese sentiment and resentment at Britain boils over
 
This is a provocative question that might derail the thread, but why is monotheism necessarily a positive development? Plenty of pan- or polytheistic societies throughout history that don't practice human sacrifice.

Fair, I was just describing the way the setting is described--the main bad bit is Assyria taking over the world.

While admittedly plenty of polytheist/pantheist societies didn't practice human sacrifice, exactly none that were monotheistic did it, so maybe that's the causal link there.
 
While admittedly plenty of polytheist/pantheist societies didn't practice human sacrifice, exactly none that were monotheistic did it, so maybe that's the causal link there.

It is of course true that human sacrifices are much more common in polytheistic societies. Though it has been pointed out that there were actually more public executions in London or Paris than Tenochtitlan per year during the height of the Aztec Empire. Is it significantly different if you're executed for being a heretic rather than being executed in a religious ceremony?
 
Is it significantly different if you're executed for being a heretic rather than being executed in a religious ceremony?

This is a fair point, yeah.

However, I do think that there's a difference in that the execution for being a heretic was fundamentally a reaction to the existence of heresy, so it would theoretically have an end-point, but the heart thing was a necessary part of Aztec religion that would theoretically keep going forever.
 
It is of course true that human sacrifices are much more common in polytheistic societies. Though it has been pointed out that there were actually more public executions in London or Paris than Tenochtitlan per year during the height of the Aztec Empire. Is it significantly different if you're executed for being a heretic rather than being executed in a religious ceremony?
See, the problem with this argument is that the Aztecs also executed criminals, with the human sacrifice being more on top of that.
 
It is of course true that human sacrifices are much more common in polytheistic societies. Though it has been pointed out that there were actually more public executions in London or Paris than Tenochtitlan per year during the height of the Aztec Empire. Is it significantly different if you're executed for being a heretic rather than being executed in a religious ceremony?

I once saw it phrased like this: "The Conquistadors were being selective with their horror at Aztec sacrifice considering how back at home in Europe thousands a year were sentenced to burn at the stake in religious ritual."
 
See, the problem with this argument is that the Aztecs also executed criminals, with the human sacrifice being more on top of that.

Fair. (Though I always liked that, to the Aztecs, adultery was an executable offense but homicide wasn't)

It's one of those things that get very politicized. There is often a, reasonable, desire to reclaim pre colonial societies that were often cast very badly by colonists. You do still get academics publishing papers saying stuff like 'there is no proof that cannibalism or ritual sacrifices ever happened anywhere as our only sources are biased europeans' which is obvious nonsense, though I think some of the higher estimates of the death tolls of the sacrifices were equally nonsense

It's fair I think to point out that Aztec society was strongly state violent even in it's peaceful moments. As in you always had a background noise of violence thanks to the sacrifices, even if no laws are broken, no wars are fought etc. To an extent the best comparison would be slave trading societies, with that background violence of the slave trade. And that's something that the religion of the Aztecs dictated.

Whereas in theory, the public executions, burning of heretics, holy wars etc of the monotheist Europeans all exist as a reaction like @Walpurgisnacht said, they wouldn't be there in peace. In the 17th century that's a relatively theoretical distinction, in practice there was never really peace and the Spanish killed aztecs in much greater numbers through forced labour than had died in sacrifices.

But I suppose you fast forward that spanish society to the 21st century and violence, executions, war etc. are much reduced so you get something closer to peace. Whereas, in theory, you fast forward your aztecs and they're still executing 20,000 people a year through the sacrifices. And in 2021 that number is far more notable, because there isn't that background of war and executions elsewhere. The idea of a modern society, where laws and everything else is in place, but also you kill a kid to the sun god and that's just life is horrible and given that the aztecs were already a sophisticated urban society when they were doing this in the 16th century, it's not a huge leap.

The problem I have with that is that it seems to posit polytheist religion alone as incapable of reform. Every other kind of violence is much reduced since that time period, like I said this was a time period where every society had mass public executions not just the aztecs, and when the vast majority of the world were slaves. Why are we assuming this one area will see no reform?
 
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