HOME | DD

QuantumBranching — All Times Possible, World 2

Published: 2009-11-23 17:47:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 7502; Favourites: 32; Downloads: 61
Redirect to original
Description Follow up to the previous map.

The second world is the one 'Tommy' created by carrying out a communist revolution in the US. The US kept out of WWII, which ended in 1944 in an essential peace of exhaustion. In spite of his success, he was forced from power by 1941 and died in 'internal exile' in 1947. This world was not ours, either: William Randolph Hearts never survived childhood in office, and Garner got into office again in 1932, but was succeeded by Newton Baker, not Roosevelt.

The first atom bomb was developed in this world in 1947, by the Soviets. Two years later, when the USSR made grumbly noises re the German duplication of the bomb and suggested an immediate universal nuclear freeze, the end-game began. Thanks to Von Braun and co. the Germans had a delivery system almost from the start, but their production was initially very low, while the USSR had poured their remaining resources into ramping up production after their first bomb. The USSR was a very spread-out target, the Reich a concentrated one. And the UK had a bomb of their own and loads of chemical weapons. By the end of 1952, the USSR was victorious and standing astride the ruins of Germany, but exhausted, radioactive, and bled white. The Brits had liberated France and the Low Countries, received the hasty surrender of southern Italy and freed most of German Africa, but had been bled badly themselves.

The United Socialist States of America had meanwhile developed a bomb of their own, and a cold peace prevailed. The Japanese received an atomic ultimatum and a couple demonstration bombs in 1955 and pulled out of continental Asia, although thanks to US and UK pressures (worried about Soviet competition) avoided outright conquest. The Reds, with Soviet support, soon took control in China and Korea.

It seemed for a while that Red conquest of the globe was inevitable, but the USSA and the USSR hated each other almost from the first, and it was not long before the Chinese went off their own way. Meanwhile, the Brits and their European allies hung on somehow, and Communism failed to overrun South America (Yankee imposition of Communism on first Mexico and later most of Central America made it look like a new form of Imperialism to Brazilians, Argentines and co.). The Middle East failed to fall in line, either, although with the USSR in a much stronger position a leftist regime was imposed in Iran and hardened over the years (to the accompaniment of one rebellion after another).

Today the USSR survives as an ethnic Slavic dictatorship slowly shambling in the direction of Capitalism. Without the US to compete with, Soviet conquests in Europe were simply incorporated into the USSR: in any event, they really needed the manpower after the horrible losses of 1941-1944 and 1949-1952. The USSR is big on mass population movements and resettlements: in the border areas with the democracies, Germans have been replaced with central Asians and Slavs, while tens of millions of Germans (of those who survived) have been scattered through the empire and blotted up like the Jews in Assyria. The Baltic States and Kazakhstan have solid Slavic majorities.

China, on the other hand, has stuck with a more conventional Communist path, and nowadays looks like the USSR of the 1970s with more pollution and worse resource shortages. Atomic power is a must, and the inhabitants of Xinjiang are very nervous about all those fast breeder reactors in the Taklamakan. China has managed to snag the loyalties of a number of former Soviet clients as the USSR has become increasingly post-ideological and 'red-brown', but faces some serious problems with continued modernization. Currently the campaign is 'restore full self-sufficiency in basic products by 2014' and everyone has a productive rooftop garden – or else.

Tommy Bloome’s Workers Republic is no more. Too many Americans recalled a better life before the Revolution, expectations were too high and unlike in Russia or China, Americans were not accustomed to going hungry. Repression and fear of atomic war with China and/or the USSR held things together for a while, but a slow, bloody meltdown took place in the 1980s and the country fell apart entirely in the 90s. Today, some six successor states occupy the former space of the US: in spite of their geographical separation, the Pacific states and the northeastern states are seriously discussing reunification. The Mormons, finally having their own state, have no interest in rejoining the state that oppressed them so bloodily in the 40s and 50s: the New Confederacy has put its many local Party Leaders down the memory hole and consider the whole USSA thing a Yankee imposition, and look with suspicion on the regimented, militarized regimes of western Europe; and the Hawaiians, independent as a British protectorate since the late 30s, have been independent long enough to get accustomed to it. As for the WFRA, whose hard-bitten inhabitants have made Communism a new religion of their own, it’s the other states who should rejoin them.

Former Communist regimes, now relapsed to mere leftism or even (horrors) capitalism, litter te landscape. Still, Mexico is consumed by civil war, and the weirdoes in the Andes have created their Agrarian Perfect Society with the extermination of, tops, 10% of the population. Nobody would object much if someone moved in and removed them from power, but the Andes are now littered with something like 30 million concrete blockhouses and defensive positions, and the idea of occupying the place one square mile at a time unnerves most people.

The League of Democracies still hangs in there, having survived such crises as the brief spell of military rule in France, the Invasion Scare of ’61, the Iranian Crisis of ’79, and the Stock Market Crash of ’87 (which led to the 90s Slump and the Neo-Peronist revolutions in Venezuela and Argentina). Although some of its members (Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia, S. Italy, etc.) aren’t really very democratic, it’s the closest this world has to the Forces of Niceness, and although western Europe, Canada and Australia-NZ are poorer, more regulated, and far more heavily armed places than their equivalents in our world, they’re still better places to live than in the various Worker’s Paradises. With the collapse of the USSA and the increasing inward turn of a post-revolutionary USSR, the League has expanded its influence in Africa and Latin America, and has been joined by India, looking for new allies after the USSA (a traditional supporter) collapsed.

In Africa, the Azanians put up with the few square miles still controlled by the Boers – after all, the crazy men have at least a few nukes of their own, and it is satisfying that they’re now the ones trapped in a little enclave of a 'homeland.' Relations are worse with the LoD allied 'Three Kingdoms', the conservative Zulu having joined forces with the Swazi and the Sotho (and whith massive LoD arms shipments) to resist becoming part of the Glorious Republic. Former German East Africa former Tanganyika former Nazi East Africa tried to do a Von Lettow after the fall of the Fatherland, but weren’t really up for it when the Soviet Marines landed. Today the place is the most satellite-ish of Soviet satellites, and the location of a major Soviet naval base.

The Middle East is dominated by the Jerusalem League, an Arab organization formed to prevent future Soviet expansion after the Soviets sent troops to keep a friendly government in power in Iran in ’65. They receive considerable military aid from the LoD (and also from the Chinese, who are always happy to take a poke at their great rival), but their governments generally avoid admitting this to their citizens. Israel failed to take off here as well, thanks to Nazi hostility and few Jews making it out of Europe 1944-1952. A rump Jewish state survives around Tel Aviv: the rest of OTL Palestine is divided up between Jordan, Egypt and Syria, and the Palestinians are surprisingly (and often violently) insistent that they have a separate identity from Egyptian Fellahin, Jordanian Bedu, or those annoying Syrians.

The Turks are still pissy over the Soviets bullying them into making the Straits a demilitarized, free-access zone in the 50s so they could easily project force into the Mediterranean.

It’s a nervous world. The risk of global thermonuclear war has decreased from the 1980s, but the Chinese and the Soviets still grumble at each other, and although the USSR is less scared of the LoD than it was of the US and NATO OTL, they still worry, especially given the increasing lead they are displaying in the field of computer tech. (This world, thanks to a Soviet US, and a poorer, smaller Western Europe, is nearly two decades behind OTL technologically).
Related content
Comments: 5

fennomanic [2010-11-07 14:13:28 +0000 UTC]

I konw that this is just a fiction but why Finland is always part of Russia?!

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

QuantumBranching In reply to fennomanic [2010-11-09 01:07:53 +0000 UTC]

Hey, sometimes it's part of Sweden...

Sorry: statistically speaking, it's almost certain I'm unfairly shortchanging some countries. I'll try to put up a Finno-Ugrian wank one of these days...

Bruce

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

fennomanic In reply to QuantumBranching [2010-11-09 16:37:29 +0000 UTC]

I understand.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

skystoryteller [2010-04-12 09:04:01 +0000 UTC]

Very pretty.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

LEO-Recon [2009-12-13 03:51:12 +0000 UTC]

YEAH! i would live in a Communist related state! (south dakota)

👍: 0 ⏩: 0