Alternate timeline without nuclear weapons?

[cosmicalstorm]

(Im not sure if this is the correct forum for this question so I apologize in advance if im in the wrong place.)

Im wondering if there are any alternate timeline novels dealing with a timeline exactly like ours up until WW2, but where fission/fusion weapons were impossible to construct for some finicky reason.

What would the world have turned out like, wars, energy-generation and so on?

Or even better, has this topic already been covered in a thread/threads on this forum?

[Junghalli]

One of Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Travel YA novels mentions a timeline where nukes were never developed. They were fighting WWVI or something like that over there at the time the story took place (~2100 AD).

[Mayabird]

Well, for starters, the invasion of Japan would be a horrible, drawn-out bloodbath for both sides with casualties in the millions.

Question to the history buffs: would the Soviet Union have tried to invade Japan or Japanese territory in this scenario?

[Ma Deuce]

Question to the history buffs: would the Soviet Union have tried to invade Japan or Japanese territory in this scenario?

No, because they were not capable of doing so. Given how costly the kamikazes would make any US landing on Japan's home islands, the Soviets, with their far smaller navy and landing craft fleet would have been butchered.

[RedImperator]

Question to the history buffs: would the Soviet Union have tried to invade Japan or Japanese territory in this scenario?

No, because they were not capable of doing so. Given how costly the kamikazes would make any US landing on Japan's home islands, the Soviets, with their far smaller navy and landing craft fleet would have been butchered.

They invaded the Kuriles without any problems. The Japanese stripped the Kuriles and Hokkaido of defenders to prepare for an American invasion in the south, and the Americans were insisting on Soviet help against the Japanese even when they had the atomic bomb. I think it's likely the Soviets would have invaded Hokkaido, and maybe northern Honshu once the Americans invaded the south.

[phongn]

I'll expect WW3 by the late 1950s, for one, and ruinous Cold War defense expenditures. The US was already spending a fortune on defense and this with the massive force multiplier that was the nuclear weapon!

[Beowulf]

It's possible that instead of invading we do the long, horrible process of blockading the Home Islands. Less casualties for us, possibly much, much more for them, especially from starvation. We'd probably still invade, but after the defenders had been seriously weakened from the blockade. We almost certainly would ask the Soviets for help with the invasion once it came.

[phongn]

It's possible that instead of invading we do the long, horrible process of blockading the Home Islands. Less casualties for us, possibly much, much more for them, especially from starvation. We'd probably still invade, but after the defenders had been seriously weakened from the blockade. We almost certainly would ask the Soviets for help with the invasion once it came.

Richard Frank's Downfall makes it pretty clear that the US was already planning to abandon Operation Downfall. Improved intelligence indicated that the Japanese could also read maps and were stacking their defenses in the same places we were going to invade.

[Scottish Ninja]

I've also heard it was the Soviet declaration of war and not the atomic bombs that got the Japanese to surrender, which is plausible given that some of the conventional raids on Japanese cities had done more damage than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[phongn]

I've also heard it was the Soviet declaration of war and not the atomic bombs that got the Japanese to surrender, which is plausible given that some of the conventional raids on Japanese cities had done more damage than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was likely a combination of events - the Soviet invasion, the atomic bombings and the general bleak outlook of the entire war at said point.

[Ma Deuce]

I've also heard it was the Soviet declaration of war and not the atomic bombs that got the Japanese to surrender, which is plausible given that some of the conventional raids on Japanese cities had done more damage than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The difference being, the devastation of the nuclear strikes were each wrought by a single aircraft dropping a single bomb, and the Japanese had no way of knowing how many more nukes the Americans had.

[Sea Skimmer]

They invaded the Kuriles without any problems.

They are known to have lost at least one minesweeper to a kamikaze and several landing craft to strafing in those operations, but overall the Japanese flew only about 25 sorties against the very small invasion flotillas. The Japanese knew those islands didn’t matter so they weren’t about to waste resources defending them. I’ve heard conflicting stories on just what the plan was for Kyushu, but it seems that the main idea was to hold back the kamikazes from that invasion as well, saving absolutely everything to defend Honshu and above all the Tokyo region. Kyushu just didn’t have enough ground troops to become the proper bloodbath the Japanese thought they needed to shock America into negotiating, it would just be a preliminary to ensure America was already suffering hard by Coronet.

[Adrian Laguna]

No atomics means the Third World War. There's no other way about it, the tensions between East and West were simply too high. We really should all be happy that the bomb was developed, because another World War, even without nukes being flung around, would have caused Eurasia to be burned to the ground and then scrapped to the bedrock.

[Winston Blake]

No atomics means the Third World War. There's no other way about it, the tensions between East and West were simply too high. We really should all be happy that the bomb was developed, because another World War, even without nukes being flung around, would have caused Eurasia to be burned to the ground and then scrapped to the bedrock.

Huh. That means you could have a post-apocalyptic world, realistic or fantasy, which in the end turns out to be the result of The Bomb not being invented. That'd be a change from the 70s 'devil nukes destroyed the world' stories.

[Raptor]

The things is if WW3 did happen, would the much larger tank heavy Soviet army have beaten NATO in say the period between 1950-1970? Or would have armies been massive, 3x what they were in the Cold war as, money would be spent on tanks etc instead on nukes. But would ICBMs still ahve been built. Or would chemical and biological weapons be the main WMD. I just see these would have been used more often.

[phongn]

The things is if WW3 did happen, would the much larger tank heavy Soviet army have beaten NATO in say the period between 1950-1970? Or would have armies been massive, 3x what they were in the Cold war as, money would be spent on tanks etc instead on nukes.

Yes. The West was simply unwilling to spend anywhere near as much on defense as the Soviet Union was. Nuclear weapons provided a cost-effective way of countering the vast Soviet military and also ensured that the cost of any such war would be the Soviet homeland itself.

The computer revolution would provide an alternative means of force multiplication by the 1980s, but that's a long way away.

But would ICBMs still ahve been built. Or would chemical and biological weapons be the main WMD. I just see these would have been used more often.

What's the point of an ICBM without a nuclear device? They are tremendously expensive weapons systems and early ones were quite inaccurate. As for chemical and biological warfare, both sides had extensive stocks of them, but they are significantly less efficient than nuclear weapons.

[Adrian Laguna]

Huh. That means you could have a post-apocalyptic world, realistic or fantasy, which in the end turns out to be the result of The Bomb not being invented. That'd be a change from the 70s 'devil nukes destroyed the world' stories.

That would be interesting. I once read a post-apocalyptic story that reads like there was a nuclear holocaust, but it was written in the 1930s or 40s. One of the best scenes is when the main character explores an abandoned city, and I think he has mystical vision where he sees deadly mist descend upon the place and slaughter its inhabitants wholesale.

[Winston Blake]

But would ICBMs still ahve been built. Or would chemical and biological weapons be the main WMD. I just see these would have been used more often.

What's the point of an ICBM without a nuclear device? They are tremendously expensive weapons systems and early ones were quite inaccurate. As for chemical and biological warfare, both sides had extensive stocks of them, but they are significantly less efficient than nuclear weapons.

We might have seen more effort put into greater numbers of shorter-ranged SLBMs then - the Nazis experimented with submarine-towed launchers. In H.G. Wells' The Shape of Thing to Come he describes a global MAD situation based on submarine-launched 'aerial torpedoes' carrying chemical WMDs. Published in 1933.