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Alternate History General Discussion

Japhy said:
TR is left with no other choice and the game dies, much like its players up to that point.
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Whilst it's definitely unrealistic I'd always thought the most mileage in rugby being more popular in the US is TR's ultimatum (or equivalent) somehow resulting in rugby rules being adopted.
Unfortunately I think even then it'd almost certainly be the 13-man code, at least medium term, though I think you might be able to similarly handwave the Grey Cup in Canada being union.
 
napoleon IV said:
It's especially surprising because the overlap between AH nerds and anoraks is extremely high.
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Yeah.

It is also just something that very much feels like... it'd be something that at least would be covered a fair bit more then it does?

There's just so much 'fodder' (for lack of a better word) that you can kind of work to toy with and experiment, even from a more limited stance on dealing with railroads. And that's not to mention, the sort of impacts of things like the Panama Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway had on it.
 
Usili said:
This is more-so a bit of a musing for something I've thought and bundled a bit, but it always feels very surprising there isn't necessarily more like, discussion on the railroads and such considering the sheer aspect of like mergers, dissolution, emergence, and collapse that they all had, not to mention that in some cases how personality driven they were. And not to mention in terms of the matter of the US, how much the railroads also tied into heavily with regards to politics throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century and then into post-World War II and what happened there as you saw the shifts of industry and suburbanization, the changes of transportation modes, and how that kind of led on from there.

Like for instance, the matter of in terms of maybe more of a 'minor' AH thing with regards to the railroads from a US perspective but if the CNW had still opted to pursue their own extension to the Pacific rather than being a 'granger' road and how that could've impacted things, especially considering how any such opening like the MILW would've been impacted by the opening of the Panama Canal (and the kind of impact that had on expected goods moving west to east)
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I've often been AH-fascinated by the fact that the Willamette Valley used to have a sprawling passenger rail system that would have made it easy to commute from a rural town to Portland daily - one reason I haven't ever tried to write anything in that vein is because I'm not a rail nerd and don't care about any of the technical stuff. But like you say there's so much of a human element there that it would be easy to write a story without any rivetty details! I ought to try it.
 
BClick said:
I've often been AH-fascinated by the fact that the Willamette Valley used to have a sprawling passenger rail system that would have made it easy to commute from a rural town to Portland daily - one reason I haven't ever tried to write anything in that vein is because I'm not a rail nerd and don't care about any of the technical stuff. But like you say there's so much of a human element there that it would be easy to write a story without any rivetty details! I ought to try it.
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Yeah. Its not like really anything needed for rivetty details imho to discuss it unless you are like, actively going to discuss transportation and stuff?
 
West Virginia has its Eastern Panhandle because the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad went through it, and controlling that land despite it not being culturally similar to the rest was therefore considered very important. The Baltimore and Ohio was charter in 1827, which was ridiculously early and an extremely wise investment by Baltimore in an era when railroads were in their infancy. If Baltimore had not been so far-seeing and instead went for, say, a modest canal as some were proposing, then no doubt a railroad would be constructed later but it wouldn’t have been as important and so West Virginia would not necessarily have had its Eastern Panhandle. This has a host of other changes as well - for instance, Baltimore would have had a weaker economy and less prominence.
 
Indicus said:
This has a host of other changes as well - for instance, Baltimore would have had a weaker economy and less prominence.
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Could that have actually been better for it in the long run(with full hindsight after its OTL decline, of course)? Levels off as an outer suburb of DC instead of booming and then busting hard?
 
How likely (I'm hesitant to say plausible) is a UK parliament with national proportional representation (ie, no districts/subunits, just one block of percentages) becoming very Knesset-esque (IE, unstable, every governing coalition is held together with bubble gum and scotch tape, and fringe minor parties become kingmakers because their votes are needed to get to the magic 51% of seats).
 
I know this isn't what folks are talking about right now, but I was surprised to learn about this in the article and I'd be interested to know more about what kind of evil shenanigans are going on in Russian AH!
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Reposting in a more appropriate spot - is it true that Russian AH is a particular hotbed of nationalist fervor? I have no idea what other languages' AH communities look like.
 
BClick said:
Reposting in a more appropriate spot - is it true that Russian AH is a particular hotbed of nationalist fervor? I have no idea what other languages' AH communities look like.
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I have definitely heard of a bunch of Russian AH books that are AH in the time travel sense, where contemporary Russians fall back in time to the Great Patriotic War or the Byzantine Empire or 10th century Russia and Lest Darkness Fall all over the Nazis or Persians or whoever happens to be the period appropriate threat.

I have no idea what share of the Russian AH market they represent, obviously. Great though they are, I would not want the entire English-speaking AH market to be judged solely on the part of the Mack Maloney books where he travels to an alternate timeline to fight uber-Nazis with his F-16.
 
Von Callay said:
I have definitely heard of a bunch of Russian AH books that are AH in the time travel sense, where contemporary Russians fall back in time to the Great Patriotic War or the Byzantine Empire or 10th century Russia and Lest Darkness Fall all over the Nazis or Persians or whoever happens to be the period appropriate threat.

I have no idea what share of the Russian AH market they represent, obviously. Great though they are, I would not want the entire English-speaking AH market to be judged solely on the part of the Mack Maloney books where he travels to an alternate timeline to fight uber-Nazis with his F-16.
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Okay but let's be honest if we were to be judged on the merits of one set of books

We could definitely do worse than the Mack Maloney books where he travels to an alternate timeline to fight Nazis in his F-16
 
Coiler said:
How likely (I'm hesitant to say plausible) is a UK parliament with national proportional representation (ie, no districts/subunits, just one block of percentages) becoming very Knesset-esque (IE, unstable, every governing coalition is held together with bubble gum and scotch tape, and fringe minor parties become kingmakers because their votes are needed to get to the magic 51% of seats).
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The Netherlands would be more comparable- PR only really facilitates a more fluid state of national politics, with the fragmenting of larger voter blocs on the left and right that would have been held together under FPTP in favour of more specific organisations reflecting this fluidity. While this fragmenting is something you certainly see in Israel, Israeli politics also has specific crisises and neurosis that drive the fragility of its coalitions and leaves it peculiarly fucked, while the Netherlands- with an outcome of governments formed from the centre-blocs swinging with everyone it can over decades in power- is more what I'd expect the UK would see under a similar system.

If you want a picture of 'Dutch Britain' its Nick Clegg celebrating his 13th year In Office with coalition mayflies
 
monroetempleton said:
The Netherlands would be more comparable- PR only really facilitates a more fluid state of national politics, with the fragmenting of larger voter blocs on the left and right that would have been held together under FPTP in favour of more specific organisations reflecting this fluidity. While this fragmenting is something you certainly see in Israel, Israeli politics also has specific crisises and neurosis that drive the fragility of its coalitions and leaves it peculiarly fucked, while the Netherlands- with an outcome of governments formed from the centre-blocs swinging with everyone it can over decades in power- is more what I'd expect the UK would see under a similar system.

If you want a picture of 'Dutch Britain' its Nick Clegg celebrating his 13th year In Office with coalition mayflies
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Nick Clegg is literally the only person in the world that should not be able to feel offended about being compared to Rutte.
 
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