The Big One

[Stuart]

Okay, a couple questions, first, can someone explain this joke to me?

Not a joke, but in the interests of harmony and good humor, I suggest we let the matter drop.

Two is there a TBO Timeline with major events noted?

Indeed there is; Here Story names in red. The timeline of stories actually goes back to 1220 BC (how's that for alternate history!) but the pre-1927 stories are all background and fit into our existing timeline. The TBOverse timeline diverges on June 19, at 12 noon when the German acceptance of the Halifax-Butler armistice proposals arrives.

Finally, whilst I know TBO America has taken a pretty strict Bombers-Come-First policy, I was wondering how development of other military equipment has gone? For example what are these F-114's and -116's I hear of and what is the standard equipment as of 2007 in the TBO-verse?

There are a whole clutch of factfiles that give teh information you need Here

If you've got any more questions, I'd be glad to answer them for you. There's a huge mass of background data to TBO (four filing cabinet drawers full) that supports the main stories.

[Ace Pace]

By the way, one guess who was behind it (rhetorical question only)

Okay, a couple questions, first, can someone explain this joke to me?

Two is there a TBO Timeline with major events noted?

Finally, whilst I know TBO America has taken a pretty strict Bombers-Come-First policy, I was wondering how development of other military equipment has gone? For example what are these F-114's and -116's I hear of and what is the standard equipment as of 2007 in the TBO-verse?

Timeline

[Starglider]

This might help. I'm sorry its a bit hard to read. @ = OTL

I wasn't aware that the US casualities in TBO were already far in excess of OTL even without a land invasion of Europe.

While the US has very good intelligence on Nazi Germany, it isn't perfect and the idea of doubling the US death rate is profoundly horrifying.

Well, relatively speaking perhaps, it would still be a tiny fraction of Russia's, or Germany's.

The F-108 is a long-range escort fighter, its designed to locate enemy fighters and destroy them (and their airfields) before the bombers arrive. The F-112 is the long-range interceptor that's designed to break up inbound enemy bomber formations while they are still a long way from the US,

What's the effective difference between these roles? AFAIK the YF-12, actually has a slightly longer range than the F-108 (~3000 vs ~2500 miles), but those are OTL specs. Neither role needs rapid climb or acceleration (again AFAIK), unlike the point defence role, and they both need a fair number of long-range AAMs and might have to engage fighters as well as bombers (enemy escorts or interceptors).

Yes in both cases. The bombers carry both self defense missiles (Pyewacket or "The Frisbee") and a complex and comprehensive defense suite called the Defensive Anti-Missile System (DAMS) that's described (sparingly, most of DAMS is highly classified still) in RotV.

Gah sorry, clearly I've forgotten quite a few things from that story.

Incidentally how is TBO railgun and directed energy weapon research proceeding? Presumably they didn't have a 'Star Wars' program as such - unless there was a scare about new missiles (British designed missiles? ) overcoming the 60s-vintage initial ABM infrastructure that spurred a burst of new research comparable to OTL.

Oddly, that's not how it all started. I wanted to do a story that was a counter to all the "Erwin Rommel and Nazi Uberweapons Conquer the World" tales that were doing the rounds.

The uberweapon stuff is generally just silly, but in TBO if the US hadn't comitted troops to the Russian front presumably the Nazis would've conquered Eurasia. What do you think would happen next, cold war with the US? Try to conquer India or South Africa? Still allied with the Japanese or go to war with them?

So I wanted to try and remind people what assured destruction meant in nuclear terms.

Albeit with primitive low-yield devices.

Anyway, to get a better-than-historical result for teh Germans I had to knock the U.K. out of the war.

Were you looking for the latest possible divergence that would produce the desired result? Did you consider earlier divergence points, e.g. rewriting turn of the century politics so that Germany came out of the First World War in a better position?

It's wish fullfilment in the sense that you personally would presumably have like to have seen it happen, though hopefully not via the horrific mass nuclear attacks in TBO.

I must admit, I don't see blowing up Nazi Germany (or other fascists as determined by the Government of the United States) as being a bad idea.

No, but as you say, both the military and civillian casualties in TBO are horrendous, there's massive environmental damage to Europe and the far east ends up in a pretty bad state. I hope it's not supposed to be a /preferable/ timeline to OTL, regardless of the nice things that happen there in the late 20th century (e.g. the space progress).

One is that Zhukov et al really did stage what amounted to a coup in 1942. They went to Stalin, told him that his actions and interference were severely damaging Russian defense and if he wanted to continue, he could do it without them. They gave him a list of demands, he complied with them and that's when the war changed.

I didn't know that was OTL (should've guessed though), I'll have to read up on it sometime.

I really don't know whether a space elevator is practical. I'm now going to make a terrible confession. Sometimes I toss ideas out in the discussion of stories and feed off people's reactions as to whether they are practical or not - and if so, how they can be done. The Space Elevator is a good example. I don't have the technical or metallurgical knowledge to determine whether the idea is practical or not, so I consult people who do.

I have to ask, since it's my own area of expertise; how did artificial intelligence progress go in TBO, compared to OTL (and to a lesser extent, software engineering in general)? Presumably they didn't reach or surpass human equivalence prior to 2100ish.

[phongn]

No, but as you say, both the military and civillian casualties in TBO are horrendous, there's massive environmental damage to Europe and the far east ends up in a pretty bad state. I hope it's not supposed to be a /preferable/ timeline to OTL, regardless of the nice things that happen there in the late 20th century (e.g. the space progress).

I don't think he was trying to go for a "preferable" timeline but rather one that was simply different.

I have to ask, since it's my own area of expertise; how did artificial intelligence progress go in TBO, compared to OTL (and to a lesser extent, software engineering in general)? Presumably they didn't reach or surpass human equivalence prior to 2100ish.

The computer world is much more heavily networked in TBOverse with hosted-services becoming popular early on (side-effect of NORAD's networking infrastructure, IIRC). I'd also suspect that tools to deal with concurrency are rather more mature as well.

Moore's Law may have also slowed due to the widepread shortage of machine tools slowing down fab construction, though once consumer demand becomes high enough it drives the market (like in OTL).

For minor trivia, some of us on HPCA proposed something like the M68K becoming the dominant ISA, though there's this weird Hungarian computer manufacturer making low-cost machines with a strange, strange architecture ( ). I don't think we ever did figure out how broadband would evolve in the US.

[Stuart]

Well, relatively speaking perhaps, it would still be a tiny fraction of Russia's, or Germany's.

Sorry, misunderstanding there. The horror of the casualties is as perceived by the American population in the 1940s. They'd find doubling them their worst nightmare come true. Hence the lack of reluctance to blasting Germany off the map and the postwar determination never to send a mass army to war again.

What's the effective difference between these roles? AFAIK the YF-12, actually has a slightly longer range than the F-108 (~3000 vs ~2500 miles), but those are OTL specs. Neither role needs rapid climb or acceleration (again AFAIK), unlike the point defence role, and they both need a fair number of long-range AAMs and might have to engage fighters as well as bombers (enemy escorts or interceptors).

The F-112 is an interceptor that operates in a comprehensive ground controlled network (SAGE) that's a part of an integrated air defense system (NORAD). Therefore it has datalinks for ground-to air control, etc and flies unde ground control. The F-108 is on its own, deep in enemy territory and has only itself and its wingmen to rely on.

Incidentally how is TBO railgun and directed energy weapon research proceeding? Presumably they didn't have a 'Star Wars' program as such - unless there was a scare about new missiles (British designed missiles? ) overcoming the 60s-vintage initial ABM infrastructure that spurred a burst of new research comparable to OTL.

They're both going although the emphasis is different. Railguns appear in Interstellar highway (by the way, if you work the energy out, they're more powerful than Starfleet's "phasers". That isn;t an accident.

The uberweapon stuff is generally just silly, but in TBO if the US hadn't comitted troops to the Russian front presumably the Nazis would've conquered Eurasia. What do you think would happen next, cold war with the US? Try to conquer India or South Africa? Still allied with the Japanese or go to war with them?

The Germasn weren't going to get much further; they were doing well to get as far as they did. If teh US hadn'tr arrived, there would have to have been a ceasefire/armistice. And another war later.

Albeit with primitive low-yield devices.

That's the punchline - the reality of thermonuclearw ar is a thousand times worse that The Big One.

Were you looking for the latest possible divergence that would produce the desired result? Did you consider earlier divergence points, e.g. rewriting turn of the century politics so that Germany came out of the First World War in a better position?

Yes, too early a date and there would be no solid database to work from. Things would change too much.

No, but as you say, both the military and civillian casualties in TBO are horrendous, there's massive environmental damage to Europe and the far east ends up in a pretty bad state. I hope it's not supposed to be a /preferable/ timeline to OTL, regardless of the nice things that happen there in the late 20th century (e.g. the space progress).

TBO isn't a utopia or a dystopia, its a differotopia. Its an exercise in "if this is the situation, what is the result? Germany does better in WW2, what happens next? Japan occupies China, what happens next?

I have to ask, since it's my own area of expertise; how did artificial intelligence progress go in TBO, compared to OTL (and to a lesser extent, software engineering in general)? Presumably they didn't reach or surpass human equivalence prior to 2100ish.

Individual computers are a bit behind OTL, networking a bit ahead. On-line gaming ahead, individual stand-alone computer games a bit below

As to 2100, it's hard to say since we don't know what the standard of technology will be in 2100. Stone spears and clubs is my guess, I'm very pessimistic about humanity making it to 2100.

[Starglider]

Reread most of this thread from the start, to see some of the other questions asked and answers given (I'd previously skipped the middle 20 pages or so - the nuke effect discussion was interesting and covered things like the 'toxin cocktail' effect I hadn't ready about before). I noticed that this comment;

I just spent the last hour and a half reading through The Big One, and I am definitely impressed by it. I honestly wanted the Germans to at least save one city at the end, or shoot down the bombers that hit Berlin, at least something that would put up more of a fight then being bent over and mercilessly ass raped like they were.

People go on for ever about wonderful German aircraft etc but the truth is that nothing they had on the drawing board that could be in service within a realistic timeframe could stop a B-36. It took ten years of intensive effort by the US and Russia (both of whom knew what a B-36 could and could not do) to devise such a defense.

Call it morbid curiosity but have you had uber-weapon enthusiasts telling you about their personal favourite 'napkinwaffe' design that could've stopped featherweight B-36s in 1947? Was there anything feasible even in principle (ignoring material and labour shortages) that could do so? The FAQ notes that even the very few high altitude figthers the Germans had operational were highly marginal against the featherweight B-36 anyway. However I get the impression that even if a major intelligence failure in the US had compromised the existience (and effectiveness) of the nuclear weapons and the B-36 buildup in mind-1945, Germany would have no real chance of stopping or even seriously mitigating the attack. What do you think the Nazi's reaction to such intelligence (assuming it was detailed and taken seriously) would be?

Presumably there were plans drawn up to destroy only part of Germany, or only a city or two, and then demand a surrender? Do you think there's a good chance of this working (the TBO characters clearly didn't think it was high enough to risk it, based on their knowledge)? Particularly if the entire Nazi leadership is killed in the initial limited strike?

Oh, this also amused me;

When my company does a study contract its always the first question we ask and we never get a sensible answer. A company or a government agency has a product or a project and they want to know its commecrial or technical viability. We ask why they want it at all, and they look confused. Nine times out of ten, they've developed a product or project because they could develop it and never really thought about its application.

You get that a lot in AI, people working on stuff without a clear idea of why they are doing so (other than personal fascination or buzzword compliance), what the real applications are and what the consequences will be.

From the same post:

Blowing up the enemy isn't an end in itself, its a means to an end. That's one of the subtle errors made by the planners in TBO by the way, one that became much more obvious in TGG. They were so intent on planning the destruction of Germany, they forgot that the destruction of Germany wasn't an end in itself, it was a means to an end. That objective was to bring about an end to WW2. By totally destroying Germany while leaving its armies abroad intact, that end was missed. Germany was destroyed and what was left surrendered but their armies abroad kept going and it took another ten years to finish them off.

You more recently described how a strike on the German military (much of it on Russian and occupied soil) wasn't a good bet for ending the war easier. Did you have an optimal strategy in mind that the TBO characters missed?

This caught my eye just because of the construction around here;

I live in a condo for the same reason. The trouble is that the overwhelming majority of American houses (especially recent ones) are frame construction. From a damage assessment point of view, that's tantamount to being self-destructive. For good, honest solidity, there's nothing like bricks and mortar. Last time I was in the UK (a good many years ago now), all house construction there was bricks and mortar, Frame houses were unknown.

Our house is made from 3 inch reinforced concrete faced with brick on some of the external walls (the end walls have a concrete cavity then rendering). Putting up shelves is a nightmare, it takes a hammer drill, a concrete bit and a copious supply of patience. On this estate there are a couple of derelict houses and several erroded garden walls where the concrete is chipped and the (rusting) reinforcing is exposed. Even the shed/outhouse is made from reinforced concrete (built along with the rest of the estate I imagine). Presumably this was done for construction speed (prefab concrete panels) rather than the ability to resist 7.62 NATO. Sadly the roof is still just wood and tiles and it has the standard UK deficiency of no basement, so little additional nuke resistance, but it'll be great if we ever see local gangs armed with M60s.

[Stuart]

Call it morbid curiosity but have you had uber-weapon enthusiasts telling you about their personal favourite 'napkinwaffe' design that could've stopped featherweight B-36s in 1947?

The usual culprit is the Ta-152, for some reason those who are fascinated by German weaponry seem obsessed by that aircraft. The BV-155C has a slight possibility of getting up there but it cabn't do anything useful when its up there. By the way, the story about the B-36 chasing an F-86 around the sky? A friend of mine who used to be range officer at Red FLag told me that it's happened other times as well. Most recently a B-52 got on the tail of an F-16 and repeated the lesson. That high, all that matters is how big your wings are and how much power you've got.

To put this into perspective, the first aircraft that had a real capability against the high-flying B-36 was the MiG-17

Was there anything feasible even in principle (ignoring material and labour shortages) that could do so? The FAQ notes that even the very few high altitude figthers the Germans had operational were highly marginal against the featherweight B-36 anyway.

They could carry Me-263s up on medium bopmbers and launch from altitude, do an emergency building on Wasserfall, carry other missiles up on aircraft. Quite a few extemporized things, none will stop the attack but they'll add to the bomber toll.

However I get the impression that even if a major intelligence failure in the US had compromised the existience (and effectiveness) of the nuclear weapons and the B-36 buildup in mind-1945, Germany would have no real chance of stopping or even seriously mitigating the attack. What do you think the Nazi's reaction to such intelligence (assuming it was detailed and taken seriously) would be?

At a guess move large numbers of PoWs and civilians from occupied countries into the cities (human shield), frantically start dispersing industry underground, disperse the command and leadership structure, harden factories that coudln't be moved, establish huge stocks of reserve equipment (even if it meant short-changing the units at the front._ Then there would be the X plans (the ones we can't think of). A lot of that was done in the 1950s (not the human shield stuff). Why do you think so many hospitals from that era are right out in the countryside?

Presumably there were plans drawn up to destroy only part of Germany, or only a city or two, and then demand a surrender? Do you think there's a good chance of this working (the TBO characters clearly didn't think it was high enough to risk it, based on their knowledge)? Particularly if the entire Nazi leadership is killed in the initial limited strike?

In a word,(or three) not a chance. Strikes like this only work if they are a single massive blow. any half measure just acts as an innoculation against the major strike. One blow, with maximum, overwhelming strength. Its the only thing that works.

You get that a lot in AI, people working on stuff without a clear idea of why they are doing so (other than personal fascination or buzzword compliance), what the real applications are and what the consequences will be.

We get a lot of that in the military as well.

Ardent company executive We've just developed this wonderful thing.

Stu Why?

Ardent Company executive Errr, we'll get back to you on that

30 minutes later

ardent company executive Would your company do a study, finding a use for this wonderful thing we've developed?

You more recently described how a strike on the German military (much of it on Russian and occupied soil) wasn't a good bet for ending the war easier. Did you have an optimal strategy in mind that the TBO characters missed?

Not really, there is no quick, clean way to end wars. Humanity has spent millenia looking for ones and the "quick clean end" winds up being worse than everything that went before. Strategic bombing was supposed to end the horror of the western front. It did that OK, and gave uis Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Our house is made from 3 inch reinforced concrete faced with brick on some of the external walls (the end walls have a concrete cavity then rendering). Putting up shelves is a nightmare, it takes a hammer drill, a concrete bit and a copicious supply of patience. On this estate there are a couple of derelict houses and several erroded garden walls where the concrete is chipped and the (rusting) reinforcing is exposed. Even the shed/outhouse is made from reinforced concrete (built along with the rest of the estate I imagine). Presumably this was done for construction speed (prefab concrete panels) rather than the ability to resist 7.62 NATO.

Concrete isn't so hot, it can explode when a nuclear thermal pulse hits it. Bricks are best. The roof is bad news. it is pitched I hope, not flat. Flat roofs are a death-trap.

[Starglider]

What's the effective difference between these roles? AFAIK the YF-12, actually has a slightly longer range than the F-108 (~3000 vs ~2500 miles), but those are OTL specs.

The F-112 is an interceptor that operates in a comprehensive ground controlled network (SAGE) that's a part of an integrated air defense system (NORAD). Therefore it has datalinks for ground-to air control, etc and flies unde ground control. The F-108 is on its own, deep in enemy territory and has only itself and its wingmen to rely on.

That occured to me, but I thought the USSR model was tightly ground-controlled intercept and the US more self-reliant fighters - I was probably taking this too far. Even still though, if the difference is basically the avionics fit then why develop two quite different airframes, though they have (AFAIK) similar performance? Is this just an unfortunate result of the A-12 being developed in such secrecy that other bits of the defence establishment duplicated it?

If teh US hadn'tr arrived, there would have to have been a ceasefire/armistice. And another war later.

If the Nazis had enough time to assimilate the entire European production base the consequences of that can only be really bad - particularly if the interval is long enough that they sort their nuclear program out and produce their own devices. Just more of the 'the better Germany does the worse it is for everyone else' I suppose.

Individual computers are a bit behind OTL, networking a bit ahead. On-line gaming ahead, individual stand-alone computer games a bit below.

Did the TBOverse have a dot-com boom? If it happened in the late 90s it would presumably be doing so with contemporary or even better networking (certainly pervasive broadband), but only late-80s/early-90s computers (i.e. 386s/486s/MacIIs/Amigas). The failure of the network PC concept as an evolution of the formerly popular dumb terminal was a relatively close thing OTL, and I can certainly see a lot fewer conventional PCs in business applications.

As to 2100, it's hard to say since we don't know what the standard of technology will be in 2100. Stone spears and clubs is my guess, I'm very pessimistic about humanity making it to 2100.

Simply due to bioweapons or are you thinking of other existential risks?

I see I am unable to pin you down on an opinion about AI feasibility and consequences which I can finally deploy expert knowledge to crush, or at least expand on.

Call it morbid curiosity but have you had uber-weapon enthusiasts telling you about their personal favourite 'napkinwaffe' design that could've stopped featherweight B-36s in 1947?

The usual culprit is the Ta-152, for some reason those who are fascinated by German weaponry seem obsessed by that aircraft.

I didn't think that counted as 'napkinwaffe' since it actually made it into service in OTL. By 'napkinwaffe' I thought you meant stuff that never made it off the drawing board and was unlikely to be anything more than a prototype even in 1947, but which assorted Internet denizens still insist would've been a war-winning superweapon had the Third Reich lasted a few years longer.

Incidentally did you have any specific novels or online works in mind in your earlier references to 'Rommel+superweapon Nazi triumph stories'? Particularly ones that presented Nazi successes in a favourable light?

At a guess move large numbers of PoWs and civilians from occupied countries into the cities (human shield), frantically start dispersing industry underground, disperse the command and leadership structure, harden factories that coudln't be moved, establish huge stocks of reserve equipment

So between that and the minimally-effective anti-B-36 measures, TBO alone wouldn't have been enough to knock out Germany, and more nuclear strikes would be needed? Given the use of almost every available device in TBO, presumably it would be months until further large-scale strikes could be made?

ardent company executive Would your company do a study, finding a use for this wonderful thing we've developed?

I imagine this is hard simply because humans seem to be wired for 'I am facing this challenge, how can I solve it with the odd assortment of tools I have', asking 'what future challenges will this particular tool help me with' is both reversing the process and requiring more generalist knowledge (specialists sometimes miss useful tools because they were originally developed to solve problems in other fields, but trying to work out which fields can use a nonspecific invention sounds much worse).

Still at least if Bitphase ever develops Skynet I can ask you about who to pitch it to and how.

The roof is bad news. it is pitched I hope, not flat. Flat roofs are a death-trap.

Yes, pitched, I don't think I've ever seen a tiled flat roof. To be fair I'm not sure what your standard for comparison is, there can't be many steel+tile or pitched/domed concrete roofs out there. Though hopefully we will be moving to a different area in another year or two anyway, I don't like living this close to London (for a variety of reasons; living in the outer parts of Reading and Sheffield were both preferable, the later particularly so).

EDIT: You described how the US spends less on defence in total in TBO by focusing on strategic capabilities to the near total neglect of tactical ones. However you also talk about how the tripwire massive retaliation policy relies in part on preventing many situations from ever developing into a genuine provokation of the US in the first place. Do special forces play a major role in this? I note that the F-117 is described as 'primarily used for special operations'. How do the TBO US special forces compare to OTL?

EDIT2 : Almost missed this;

Historically, oil fields fit a pattern that is usually described using the nomenclature of the nobility of a European country. In each of the world’s great oil basins, there is a single huge basin known as the Emperor Field. This is usually flanked by (typically) two smaller but still vast fields called the “queen” field and the “king.” These are surrounded, in turn, by several moderate-sized fields, or “Dukes.” What's left after that are only small pools of crude reserves or “peasants”. Each of these fields have peculiar characteristics that identify them. When OTL western oil experts started looking at the Siberian fields in the 1990s, the came to the conclusion that the Talin Field is a Duke field while the rest of the West Siberian Basin fields are peasants. That means the Emperor, King and Queen fields are still out there, waiting to be found, and if they have the same size relations to the known fields as the models predict, the reserves could be huge.

In TBO, the U.S. moves into Siberia in a big way from 1942 onwards... By applying American oil industry technology, they were able to vastly increase the output from those fields (Soviet oil recovery was only able to bring up 15 percent of the oil down there; time-comparable American technology was able to bring up 55 percent). So, the arrival of the Americans alone almost quadrupled Russian recoverable oil reserves. Those American oil experts also realized the Big Field is still out there and started to look for it. I rolled a dice and the gods said, they found the Emperor Field in 1950. Exploiting it is a problem due to harsh conditions but the dice said that it starts to come on stream in 1960 and flow increases from that point onwards.

If correct this has a massive impact on all the Peak Oil threads currently taking centre stage on this board. Yet generally the Peak Oil people tend to write off Siberian reserves as limited at best (admittadly sometimes with nothing more than 'well the USSR never managed to extract that much so it can't be there' or 'but of course the oil industry people are exagerrating as usual'). Do you have some references or a link to a more detailed study of this?

EDIT3 : Just got around to reading the last three RAF descriptions - UK Navy operating F-14s = awesome. The aftermath of the Falklands war seems to have been even more positive for the UK than OTL - but then if you wanted the OTL Thatcher / Regan relationship you'd need some reason for the UK to matter.

The Blue Baron ballistic missiles were phased out and replaced by a new missile, the Blue Prince. This had a further range extension and had improved throw weight, enabling it to be equipped with multiple warheads. At first the extra throw weight was used to carry decoys and penetration aids but after a heart-rending demonstration of the utter uselessness of such equipment over the Nevada test range, these were abandoned and replaced by an additional warhead.

Were actual UK missiles tested against the US defences? I get the impression the answer is 'yes' from the relevant thread but it doesn't seem to be confirmed.

EDIT 4 : I don't know if I'll ever be a) qualified and b) have the time to write anything for the TBOverse, but perhaps after I finnished all the stories I could have a go at a 'UK Prime Ministers of the TBOverse' to complement 'Presidents in the TBOverse'. It'd be a lot easier than a story.

[Ritterin Sophia]

There are a whole clutch of factfiles that give teh information you need Here

If you've got any more questions, I'd be glad to answer them for you. There's a huge mass of background data to TBO (four filing cabinet drawers full) that supports the main stories.

This gives me fighters and bombers, however, I was wondering if ANY development had gone into land or sea based equipment and vehicles at all? I can understand if all a measly percentage of development funding goes to strategic weaponms, but I'd have a hard time believing that absolutely nothing has been invested in developing conventional weapons.

[Stuart]

That occured to me, but I thought the USSR model was tightly ground-controlled intercept and the US more self-reliant fighters - I was probably taking this too far. Even still though, if the difference is basically the avionics fit then why develop two quite different airframes, though they have (AFAIK) similar performance? Is this just an unfortunate result of the A-12 being developed in such secrecy that other bits of the defence establishment duplicated it?

We'd have to go quite deep into the performance minutae of the two aircraft but the concept of operating independently to hunt down any interceptors is quite different from that of the interceptors themselves. Look at it this way, the F-112 is the natural prey of the F-108. The F-112 is tasked with intercepting and shooting down a basically non-manoeuvering target that is being tracked by ground stations. The F-108 has to find and then attack a target that is capable of significant manoeuver. Those are very different tasks; in OTL air superiority fighters (the TBO F-108) were regarded as being very different from interceptors (the TBO F-112). Good example, the differences between the F-101A Voodoo tactical fighter and F-101B Voodoo interceptor.

If the Nazis had enough time to assimilate the entire European production base the consequences of that can only be really bad - particularly if the interval is long enough that they sort their nuclear program out and produce their own devices. Just more of the 'the better Germany does the worse it is for everyone else' I suppose.

That's right, although the Nazis had pretty much given up on nuclear wepaons development by 1943 so restarting it wouldn't have bene plausible - at least until it leaked out that the US had nuclear weapons - then a Nazi restart would have provoked a Big One.

Did the TBOverse have a dot-com boom? If it happened in the late 90s it would presumably be doing so with contemporary or even better networking (certainly pervasive broadband), but only late-80s/early-90s computers (i.e. 386s/486s/MacIIs/Amigas). The failure of the network PC concept as an evolution of the formerly popular dumb terminal was a relatively close thing OTL, and I can certainly see a lot fewer conventional PCs in business applications.

It did (again slightly different due to differing developments).

Simply due to bioweapons or are you thinking of other existential risks?

Not just bioweapons, the possibility of a nuclear confrontation or, simply, teh whole thing collapsing. I do regard bioweapons, especially genetically engineered bioweapons, as the most serious danger the human race faces.

I see I am unable to pin you down on an opinion about AI feasibility and consequences which I can finally deploy expert knowledge to crush, or at least expand on.

I don't know enough about the area so I look for other people whose brains I can pick You might find This Thread interesting.

I didn't think that counted as 'napkinwaffe' since it actually made it into service in OTL.

I agree, it isn't really napkinwaffe, but its the one that comes up most frequently.

By 'napkinwaffe' I thought you meant stuff that never made it off the drawing board and was unlikely to be anything more than a prototype even in 1947, but which assorted Internet denizens still insist would've been a war-winning superweapon had the Third Reich lasted a few years longer.

The other major one in the true napkinwaffe category is the Ta-183. There is more utter nonsense talked about that piece of dirty paper than almost any other aircraft I can think of. The old legend that the MiG-15 is a copy of the Ta-183 still gets dutifully trotted out despite being utterly discredited. Ask how its projected performance characteristics on 2,200 pounds of thrust were greater than aircraft that had four or five times as much power and there's lots of waffle about what a brilliant deisgner Tank was. Pure idiocy.

Incidentally did you have any specific novels or online works in mind in your earlier references to 'Rommel+superweapon Nazi triumph stories'? Particularly ones that presented Nazi successes in a favourable light?

Not really, but there's a whole genre of pro-Nazi fiction like that out there.

So between that and the minimally-effective anti-B-36 measures, TBO alone wouldn't have been enough to knock out Germany, and more nuclear strikes would be needed? Given the use of almost every available device in TBO, presumably it would be months until further large-scale strikes could be made?

Nuclear device production (in OTL) was running at around ten per month by 1949; the figure for TBO in 1947 is around 15 per month. So the situation would probably be that the B-36s would be dropping them as they came off the production line. That, of course, is exactly the situation General LeMay and The Seer were trying to avoid.

Yes, pitched, I don't think I've ever seen a tiled flat roof. To be fair I'm not sure what your standard for comparison is, there can't be many steel+tile or pitched/domed concrete roofs out there. Though hopefully we will be moving to a different area in another year or two anyway, I don't like living this close to London (for a variety of reasons; living in the outer parts of Reading and Sheffield were both preferable, the later particularly so).

I have, out in Spain (not quite flat but a very gentle, circa 5 degree, pitch)

Do special forces play a major role in this? I note that the F-117 is described as 'primarily used for special operations'. How do the TBO US special forces compare to OTL?

Partly, the U.S. special forces (grouped, as in OTL under SOCOM) are the SEALS (who go in and get people), the Fleet Marine Recon Force (who go in and watch people), Air Force Commandos (who go in and take over people's airfields) and a group of others. They are used sparingly though, everybody is well aware that overuse of such groups can lead to America's Nightmare - a large scale land war.

If correct this has a massive impact on all the Peak Oil threads currently taking centre stage on this board. Yet generally the Peak Oil people tend to write off Siberian reserves as limited at best (admittadly sometimes with nothing more than 'well the USSR never managed to extract that much so it can't be there' or 'but of course the oil industry people are exagerrating as usual'). Do you have some references or a link to a more detailed study of this?

Peak oil (as an immediate problem) is nonsense. Nobody who is actually involved in the real-world oil industry takes it seriously. I got a long explanation of why a long time ago and it all has to do with the way oil reserves are calculated and accounted for. What that meant was that the world always looks as if it is running out of oil (I can confirm that; back in 1972, I can remember working on the same question when the absolute run-out date was the mid-1980s).

There is a major problem in the oil industry but it isn't shortage of crude, the world is awash with the stuff. There's so much physical oil floating around that the oil industry has run out of places to put it. (There are old tankers sitting in Norwegian fjords being used as extemporized storage sites). The problem is refining capacity; the world simply hasn't got the refining capacity to meet demand for refined products - so the price goes up. Now look at the situation; the oil industry has no capacity to refine extra oil, it has no place to put extra crude so what does it do? it doens;t dig it up. That's why production of crude has levelled off. This Article looks at the refinery problem in greater detail.

The great source for all this is a magazine called "Platt's Oilgram". The oil industry would dearly love Peak Oil to be true, it would mean they could make a fortune by uprating the value of the oil reserves they hold still in the ground. Only it isn't and won't be for decades - or possibly centuries - to come.

The article "Keeping Our Motor Running" By Investors's Business Daily published Thursday, July 19, 2007 exposes the Peak Oil business for the fraud that it is. The National Petroleum Council predicts oil output in 2030 to be 130 million bbls/day; the EIA 120 million bbls/day.

Peak Oil is essentially a hoax in the same order of magnitude as the "Flat Earth", "Intelligent Design" or "Creation Science". But, everybody was having too much fun with their doomsday projections for me to spoil it for them. If one had to really force the oil industry to guess the date when the oil really runs out, I'd guess that on present trends, they'd reckon between 200 and 300 years.

Were actual UK missiles tested against the US defences? I get the impression the answer is 'yes' from the relevant thread but it doesn't seem to be confirmed.

Yes, the real things were tested. The U.S. doesn't want people to have ballistic missiles in TBO, they're too destabilizing. So they are quite happy to demonstrate how easy ICBMs are to shoot down (and quite happy to encourage people to bring missiles to Nevada for testing against American defensive systems.

I don't know if I'll ever be a) qualified and b) have the time to write anything for the TBOverse, but perhaps after I finnished all the stories I could have a go at a 'UK Prime Ministers of the TBOverse' to complement 'Presidents in the TBOverse'. It'd be a lot easier than a story.

New authors are always welcome, all I ask is that people run the finished story by me before posting it so I can check it for consistency with the rest of the TBOverse.

[Stuart]

This gives me fighters and bombers, however, I was wondering if ANY development had gone into land or sea based equipment and vehicles at all? I can understand if all a measly percentage of development funding goes to strategic weaponms, but I'd have a hard time believing that absolutely nothing has been invested in developing conventional weapons.

Development does go on; one day I'll have to do the tanks thing. The standard US tank family went

M4 with 75mm
M4 with 76mm
M4 with 90mm (basically the M-36B2 witha covered turret)
M26 with 90mm as per historical
M46 - M26 with Russian Front lessons
M47 - cleaned up and improved M46
M48 - M47 with a lot of T54 influence - not the same as OTL M48
M60 with 120mm gun. Totally different tank from OTL M60. TBO M60 is based on the T-95 prototype.

M (something) TBO analog of the M-1 Abrams.

There are Russian, Indian, Australian and Chipanese tank design families as well. Some of the rifle stuff (especially the Australian side of things) has been written up in the factfiles section - the indexing isn't complete yet. For example, the US Army in TBO still carries the M-14 only in TBO its chambered for a high-velocity .276 cartridge.

One big difference between TBO and OTL, no 5.56x45mm cartridges in TBO. The standard is around .276/6.5mm with the exception of the Canadians who stuck with .303 and the Russians who have stuck with 7.62x39mm.

[Starglider]

You might find This Thread interesting.

Yes, thanks, shame the thread died off.

The other major one in the true napkinwaffe category is the Ta-183. There is more utter nonsense talked about that piece of dirty paper than almost any other aircraft I can think of. The old legend that the MiG-15 is a copy of the Ta-183 still gets dutifully trotted out despite being utterly discredited. Ask how its projected performance characteristics on 2,200 pounds of thrust were greater than aircraft that had four or five times as much power and there's lots of waffle about what a brilliant deisgner Tank was. Pure idiocy.

Ah, I can imagine. Does the Focke-Wulf Project VII get similar treatment? It seems like a good illustration of how desperately broken German jet engine technology was to me; to get even vaugely acceptable performance out of the Vampire-like airframe they had to put a secondary rocket engine in it, despite the mass and complexity costs.

Peak oil (as an immediate problem) is nonsense.

This would be an interesting discussion to have (I'd certainly appreciate being able to refute peak oil catastrophists), as might what you think about various other kinds of existential risk (e.g. the transhumanist-related ones), but that would be rather OT for this thread.

The problem is refining capacity; the world simply hasn't got the refining capacity to meet demand for refined products - so the price goes up.

Much of the west is bottlenecked by overregulation and NIMBYs, but what's the blocker for expanding refining capability in China and India? If it's just time and money, then one could expect to see the amount of oil extracted and refined starting to rise again in the near future as more capacity comes online (given that demand growth is still strong).

Development does go on; one day I'll have to do the tanks thing. The standard US tank family went

It's kind of a shame some version of the MBT-70 isn't in there, as it was an intesting design - though if the project was similar to OTL then clearly the US would need a different partner to co-develop it with. I imagine without the Germans on board it might have turned out somewhat simpler, cheaper and more practical.

[Mr. Coffee]

Winter Warriors - Seventeen

Awesome chapter, Mr. Slade. David is my son's name, so the boy'll get a kick out that.

One question, how common was the use of napalm in an anti-ship/anti-air defense role TBO vs OTL? That's the first time I've ever even thought of using it for that.

[Alan Bolte]

Sweet. "Bolt from the Blue." I'm sure I'll find a use for that somewhere.

[Agent Fisher]

Sweet, I was in there!

[Stuart]

One question, how common was the use of napalm in an anti-ship/anti-air defense role TBO vs OTL? That's the first time I've ever even thought of using it for that.

The use of napalm and rockets for flak suppression was very common in land attacks. It wasn't used much against naval targets primarily because by the time napalm was round as a standard tool (early 1945) there wasn't a naval threat to use it on. But against land targets (especially in Korea and Vietnam), the combo was very effective.

They key here is that American pilots aren't very experienced in naval attacks. What they've done is taken the doctrine used against land targets and are applying it to a naval target. In relative terms, their inexperience shows and they aren't actually doing too well. Their hit rates are low and (especially in the battle against the German carriers) they're losing more planes than they should. Of course, they're learning.......

[Sea Skimmer]

Development does go on; one day I'll have to do the tanks thing. The standard US tank family went

M4 with 75mm
M4 with 76mm
M4 with 90mm (basically the M-36B2 witha covered turret)
M26 with 90mm as per historical
M46 - M26 with Russian Front lessons
M47 - cleaned up and improved M46
M48 - M47 with a lot of T54 influence - not the same as OTL M48
M60 with 120mm gun. Totally different tank from OTL M60. TBO M60 is based on the T-95 prototype.

You mean M-36B1. The B2 model used an M10 hull; the B1 had an M4A3 hull. I’d expect when they make the production shift to have a closed turret, rather then field expedient lids, they’ll also add a coaxial machine gun.

[Starglider]

I have been following Winter Warriers and it's good stuff, though not quite as good as Ride of the Valkyries, which still has the best narrated 20th century naval engagement I've yet seen.

But I have a couple more questions;

UK/Canada
Domestic Both countries are semi-socialist democracies. They run on feel-good policies that mostly bite them at regular intervals. They suffer severe internal problems from crime and terrorism.

Where is the severe terrorism problem coming from, if the IRA is not in operation (Northern Ireland is no longer part of the UK after all)? Historically the UK had some minor anarchist attacks in the 1970s, but they were fairly pathetic. Canada AFAIK had some minor issues with radical Quebec independence types but nothing serious (not sure this even applies in TBO given the state of France). Is the Caliphate singling them out for special attention for some reason? If so why are they having more success there than in the US?

Not sure I agree with that; I think it's just as likely that the Irish would (not without some justification) blame the British for what the Germans did to them - "if those cowardly British hadn't surrendered our brave boys wouldn't have had to fight and die." Britain turning their occupiers into immigrants wouldn't go over well at all in Ireland - the Germans there would either head for the border with Northern Ireland (thus creating a mythology that the IRA drove the Nazis out) or try setting up there own little Irish state, as they did in Russia.

Those are very good points indeed; I may well rethink my projected Irish situation because of them. Thank's Theo.

Half of my family is Catholic (Northern) Irish, and I've spent a fair amount of time there, so I have some insight into this. I think it critically depends on the actions of the British government immediately after TBO. If Ireland was in an even worse state than Great Britain, and the UK government made any sort of attempt to help out in the way that the US helped Russia (however token these efforts were), it would seed the polarisation of opinion in a completely different direction than if they were left alone. Secondly the attitude of the UK government to the Northern Irish protestants (who are actually almost all Scottish descended) would be highly relevant. Historically they oppressed the Catholics right through the central decades of the 20th century, which the British government tried to limit but never very effectively. I think it's quite possible that the Protestants collaborated with the Nazis to a far greater degree than the Catholics (it would fit what I know of the historical Ulster Unionist groups' philosophy and methodology - many of them would get on just fine with the Nazis) and thus are probably even more hated by the Catholics after the war than OTL.

My ideal TBO timeline would have the UK government disowning this fairly worthless and lothesome group of collaborators and loaning the IRA special forces units to capture and bring to trial the Unionist leaders, and if necessary regular troops to destroy any pockets of resistance by paramilitaries. Shipping anyone who wanted to leave (and there would likely be quite a few hardliners who wouldn't tolerate subservience to a primarily-catholic national government, though the majority would stay) back to Scotland would also help. This could plausibly lead to a gradual, undeclared reunification later, particularly as in OTL Ireland was kept afloat and then made successful by a large amount of EU and US aid, which they won't be getting in TBO.

OTOH if the UK government foolishly tries to prop up the unionist leaders and shield collaborators from reprisals they'll be hated for the next century or two.

[Surlethe]

I just got The Big One in the mail today. I'll be reading it in the car this afternoon and I'll be able to post a review from a fresh, unspoiled perspective this evening or tomorrow (or failing internet access this week, Friday). I'm looking forward to it.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Exodus, 2044

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Nightmares, 2007

[Surlethe]

Okay, initial impressions of the book. Believable timeline, nice plot, good message. The descriptions of the effects of a nuclear attack made me never want to ever ever ever be near a nuclear detonation. They're probably the most graphic and heartrending I've ever seen, save only Hiroshima. The illustrations of the US mindset toward the war, particularly from the German pilot's perspective, were also very interesting. And while I was feeling terribly sorry for the Germans, at the same time there was a little US fanboy jumping up and down in me at the descriptions of such total US domination of the world during and after the war.

The downside was the utterly atrocious grammar. It made the book nigh-unreadable. I wholeheartedly suggest another edition, rewritten at least twice -- once for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and once just in case you missed anything.

All in all, I enjoyed it, though the terrible punctuation (in particular) detracted considerably. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the TBO-verse, and hopefully contributing in the future.

Oh, and Stuart? You should drop into some of the Peak Oil threads down in SLAM or N&P sometime. The debate would be fun.

[XaLEv]

How many nations take part in the ultimate destruction of the Caliphate? Presumably Russia would, given its strong alliance to the US and participation in the bombing in Ride of the Valkyries, but what about the UK, Triple Alliance and others?

[Stuart]

How many nations take part in the ultimate destruction of the Caliphate? Presumably Russia would, given its strong alliance to the US and participation in the bombing in Ride of the Valkyries, but what about the UK, Triple Alliance and others?

The three nations that work The Caliphate over are the US, Russia and UK (as described in Sceptered Isle). It's not a single raid, its a fairly long campaign that involves hunting down installations and then destroying them (another thing manned bombers can do that missiles can't). The effects are catastrophic, not least because some the initiations aimed at destroying deep bunkers are incredibly dirty and contaminate large areas.

Remember, the cumulative effect of the Great Biowar and disruption it causes are to kill more than 3/4 of the world's population and throw humanity into the Dark ages for 400 years. That is, by the way, the optimistic assessment for a war of this type.

[Stuart]

The downside was the utterly atrocious grammar. It made the book nigh-unreadable. I wholeheartedly suggest another edition, rewritten at least twice -- once for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and once just in case you missed anything.

There was an inquiry as to what happened with the spelling and punctuation - it turned out the last batch of author's corrections weren't made due to an administrative error. There is a second edition (hardback) coming out with that stuff fixed.

I'd take serious issue with you on the grammar. The story is largely told via the eyes and internal thoughts of the various characters who are at the center of each section - so the text follows their thoughts. As a result, its colloquial rather than classic prefect" grammar, its the way people speak and think with minimum modifications for clarity. Redo those sections in classical grammar and it reads horribly wrong, stilted and false.

Oh, and Stuart? You should drop into some of the Peak Oil threads down in SLAM or N&P sometime. The debate would be fun.

Everybody is having too much fun with their doom, gloom and utter disaster prognostications. I don't want to spoil it for them. Anyway, neither Peak Oil nor Global Warming are problems, humanity is going to destroy itself long before they become significant. I don't give us much past the middle of this century. We had our chance to survive and blew it.