The Big One

[phongn]

I've just started reading this and I'm at the part where we are seeing this german pilot think to himself and I am wondering, is this just glorious america crushifies germany and then any other ponce who tries to mess with them stuff or will we actially see something interesting?

There will be other interesting stories and the US-centric plotlines are usually only one part of the story. But yes, the US will come out very much on top in this story and will stay there. I wouldn't quite describe the US as "glorious" in this timeline, either.

[MKSheppard]

Patron of the Arts 2

[MKSheppard]

I've just started reading this and I'm at the part where we are seeing this german pilot think to himself and I am wondering, is this just glorious america crushifies germany and then any other ponce who tries to mess with them stuff or will we actially see something interesting?

The true performance of the Peacemaker is well documented Not until 1955 could we reliably intercept it

[Darth Fanboy]

I've just started reading this and I'm at the part where we are seeing this german pilot think to himself and I am wondering, is this just glorious america crushifies germany and then any other ponce who tries to mess with them stuff or will we actially see something interesting?

Glorious US and Russia. Best tag team since Macho Man and Hulk Hogan (better than them even).

[Stuart]

I've just started reading this and I'm at the part where we are seeing this german pilot think to himself and I am wondering, is this just glorious america crushifies germany and then any other ponce who tries to mess with them stuff or will we actially see something interesting?

Germany gets squashed like a bug, yes. However, its not a question of "glorious". These stories are morally very ambivalent; they reflect the reality of the power-politics world and those realities are very uncomfortable.

TBO was written for three reasons. One, and perhaps the most important, was to remind people of what a nuclear war is really like. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki have faded into the pages of a history book people are forgetting that. One symptom is the prevalence of people who oppose ballistic missile defense and call for a return to the old days of Mutually Assured Destruction. I can only think that such people do not understand what "assured destruction" means. TBO makes it clear. Everything and everybody in the target area dies and nobody can do anything to stop it. Nuclear weapons are not just big bombs, they are cataclysmic.

The second reason was a reaction to the "German uberweapons and Erwin Rommel Conquer The World" school of alternative history. Here, the Germans have all their uberweapons and Erwin Rommel (who appears in the next novel by the way) and it does them no good. Because the US has nuclear weapons and the B-36. Given the PoD for TBO (mid-day, June 19, 1940), the Germans cannot build nuclear weapons and they cannot build aircraft that fly high enough to intercept the B-36. That means they are all going to die. No matter what they do, Germany is a dead duck.

The third reason was a reaction to the "Golden BB" school of alternative history. You know that one; if only X had done Y, we would now be living in paradise. Well, we're back to the world of real power-politics and it just isn't like that. Real-world situations end in solutions that are incredibly messy and often as many problems have been created as have been solved. TBO's like that; the US bombers solved the Nazi problem but created a world that is severely disfunctional; in many respects as disfunctional as ours is.

The TBO series does something a bit unusual; most WW2 alternative history stories end with the end of WW2. This one starts there.

[Andras]

Demonic Possession

[Darth Fanboy]

?You?ve never read the Jewish Mystical Karballah have you?? Lazaruski shook his head. ?You should. I?m mentioned in it. Quite prominently in fact. Paul Mikhailovich Lazaruski, you have the Queen of Seductresses and the Patron-Demoness of the Succubi in your bed and you want to sleep??

[Mayabird]

Something I wonder...did the famous "Demons" like Shakespeare and da Vinci do their famous works before or after they realized they were immortal? Better phrasing, did they have a couple centuries of practice time before starting? The Seer obviously had some long years behind him before being Arminius.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wait, since when is DaVinci a demon?

[ZShade]

Wait, since when is DaVinci a demon?

He's mentioned in a conversation between the Seer and the Ambassador in High Frontier 19.

[Stuart]

Start of a new Story called "Anvil of Necessity" set in 1949 - 1951

Anvil of Necessity - One

Enjoy.

[Stuart]

Wait, since when is DaVinci a demon?

He's a part of Loki's group; in this era he's using the name Leonard Vincent.

[Mayabird]

Wait, since when is DaVinci a demon?

He's a part of Loki's group; in this era he's using the name Leonard Vincent.

Just out of curiousity Stuart, have you ever read The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein? I'm asking because in it, a scientist tells the story of one of his students, one Leonard Vincent, who was sent back in time five hundred years. Yes, Leonardo da Vinci. He could sketch tanks, for instance, because he knew about them with his knowledge from the future.

[Stuart]

Just out of curiousity Stuart, have you ever read The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein? I'm asking because in it, a scientist tells the story of one of his students, one Leonard Vincent, who was sent back in time five hundred years. Yes, Leonardo da Vinci. He could sketch tanks, for instance, because he knew about them with his knowledge from the future.

I did, many years ago. Its not one of my favorite Heinleins but I guess the name Leonard Vincent must have stuck in the back of my mind.

Something I wonder...did the famous "Demons" like Shakespeare and da Vinci do their famous works before or after they realized they were immortal? Better phrasing, did they have a couple centuries of practice time before starting? The Seer obviously had some long years behind him before being Arminius.

My thought is that their "famous period" is usually the result of their experience in their long lives prior to hitting it rich. Practice makes perfect and all that. So, for example, Shakepeare may have had several previous shots at being a famous playwrite before getting into his stride. Afterwards, they have to lie low for a while to avoid attracting too much attention. It may well be, for example, that William Shakespeare and Andrew Lloyd Weber are the same person..............

[technomage]

Anvil of Necessity Two is up.

[Zed Snardbody]

I had a thought, yes it hurt like all hell, I think its blindingly obvious but I wanted to throw it out there anyway, it came to me as a kind oof formula.

The political viability of the nuclear option decreases relative to the severity of the trigering event, and the severity of the event, from the time of the event to actual retaliation.

Basiccly meaning that is some ass hat from bumfuckistan uses a WMD in an American city on the first, but we don't retaliate until the 14 with a nuclear attack, the political backlass will be much larger from the general population.

Thoughts? Agree, disagree?

[Stuart]

The political viability of the nuclear option decreases relative to the severity of the trigering event, and the severity of the event, from the time of the event to actual retaliation. Basicaly meaning that is some ass hat uses a WMD in an American city on the first, but we don't retaliate until the 14 with a nuclear attack, the political backlash will be much larger from the general population.

Its a very good point; if an action does not meet with a response, then the fact of that action becomes acceptable and a more serious version of the same action becomes more likely. What is even worse, once a given action becomes acceptable due to a lack of response, it becomes incrementally harder to respond to it.

Mao had a good phrase for it "Push out a bayonet. If it meets fat, push in deeper but if it meets steel, pull back for another day."

We saw precisely this mechanism at play in the years that lead up to the 9/11/2001 attacks (this isn't a dig at the Democrat party; there is blame enough here for all to share). Because of the prevailing political model that was accepted by the administrations back then (a thing called Minimal-Realism), early terrorist attacks against the United States, its interests and its citizens were not the subject of response. This created an environment where there was a widespread perception that the United States saw such attacks as either acceptable or was not able to respond to them. The terrorist world was not (and is not) monolithic; it consists of groups whose interests are often antithetical and were involved in power-plays against eachother. Due the perceived "acceptability" of attacks on America, killing Americans became a sort of currency amongst such groups. 9/11 came out of one such power-play in Afghanistan.

The key change in recent years is that the current administration simply does not accept the older Minimal-Realism model of how international relations works. They follow a different model called Maximal Realism that has an entirely different set of working principles. That's one reason why the debate on political issues is so sterile and unproductive; the two sides simply are not speaking the same language. One of the precepts of Maximal-Realism is precisely that all attacks on national interests should be the subject of an appropriate response - and that appropriate means a response so scary that nobody wants ever to provoke another one. That way the process of acceptability and repetition gets short-circuited before it ever gets started.

At the moment, if somebody initiates a nuclear device in, say San Francisco, US policy is that the responsible party will get blasted into eternity shortly afterwards. We would know where the device came from by the way; that's known and understood technology. The national source of the device then ceases to exist. If, however, that commitment ever falls into doubt, then we are likely to see such an attempt being made.

[Myrmidon]

I just saw a show on the military channel about the Special Operations Command. Operators interviewed in Afghanistan spoke very knowledgeably of the local politics and demonstrated a very hands-on training in political theory and the art of political manipulation. They are put through GI schools that teach them exactly how the world works and to identify where to grab the leverage.

In the USA today politics are mostly the province of rich schemers farming the treasury and weedy little poly-sci majors with inherited wealth and no experience at anything useful. I wonder what will happen when 44000 special ops troops that have been trained in the science of politics retire and seek a place in the civil society?

I suspect that the whole tone of the national political debate is going to change for the better when this new wave crashes home. I would guess that Maximal Realism is the shape of things to come.

[MKSheppard]

Interstellar Highway 3

[Col. Crackpot]

Interstellar Highway 3

fantastic! And it's good to see the Senior Chief again!

[CaptainChewbacca]

I added some starcharts because I got bored.

[admiral_danielsben]

A question about Insterstellar Highway and the 'future' of TBO:

The Demons and the Wolfen seem to be almost tailor-made for each other: the long-lived, thoughtful, long-term-oriented Demons and the quick, capricious, devil-may-care attitude of the Wolfen are complimentary.

Is there going to be a speciation of humanity into Demons and Wolfen? Or perhaps Demons, Wolfen, and a third 'moderate' species based from HSS?

[Mayabird]

A question about Insterstellar Highway and the 'future' of TBO:

The Demons and the Wolfen seem to be almost tailor-made for each other: the long-lived, thoughtful, long-term-oriented Demons and the quick, capricious, devil-may-care attitude of the Wolfen are complimentary.

Is there going to be a speciation of humanity into Demons and Wolfen? Or perhaps Demons, Wolfen, and a third 'moderate' species based from HSS?

Since the Demons cannot reproduce after their seeming immortality becomes apparent and whatever causes it does not appear to have a genetic basis, the answer is probably no.

[admiral_danielsben]

A question about Insterstellar Highway and the 'future' of TBO:

The Demons and the Wolfen seem to be almost tailor-made for each other: the long-lived, thoughtful, long-term-oriented Demons and the quick, capricious, devil-may-care attitude of the Wolfen are complimentary.

Is there going to be a speciation of humanity into Demons and Wolfen? Or perhaps Demons, Wolfen, and a third 'moderate' species based from HSS?

Since the Demons cannot reproduce after their seeming immortality becomes apparent and whatever causes it does not appear to have a genetic basis, the answer is probably no.

I think it probably has a genetic basis... somewhere. Probably a hugely recessive mutation dealing with the immune system.

And just because they cannot reproduce normally... Earth by 2445 has much more advanced genetics tech (400 years fighting superviruses)... it might make it possible to either 'create' demons or genetically engineer current ones so they can reproduce... or even transplant the genes to normal humans or Wolfen. Of course, nigh-immortal wolfen sound like a contradiction in terms, as that would entail looking beyond the next few years.

Oh, and one more question: Was JRR Tolkien's wife a Demon who managed to do something (use some of Naamah's poisons perhaps) to shorten her life? It would very much explain the Beren & Luthien story.

[Stuart]

Is there going to be a speciation of humanity into Demons and Wolfen? Or perhaps Demons, Wolfen, and a third 'moderate' species based from HSS?

My thought is that the Wolfen are actually the start of a new species of human - the process of speciation is starting although they haven't - yet - split off into a separate breeding population. I envisage that, in the end, traditional and wolfen humans won't interbreed because traditions find the wolfen inability to commit to anything long term denies them the security they want while wolfen find traditionals too boring to hold their interest.

Earth by 2445 has much more advanced genetics tech (400 years fighting superviruses)... it might make it possible to either 'create' demons or genetically engineer current ones so they can reproduce... or even transplant the genes to normal humans or Wolfen. Of course, nigh-immortal wolfen sound like a contradiction in terms, as that would entail looking beyond the next few years.

That's actually an issue that comes up in an impending chapter. By the way, wolfen have a problem looking beyond the next few days, let alone the next few years.