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March 28, 2024, 11:09:12 AM

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Alternate history - your favourite hypotheses

Started by Fambo Number Mive, August 08, 2022, 12:16:41 PM

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Fambo Number Mive

I enjoy reading alternate history books and love speculating about how history could have been different if a few events had not happened.

If Kennedy had not been assassinated in 1963, how different would the world be today? Would Kennedy have been as successful as Johnson as getting through domestic civil rights legislation? Would he have been as much of a deluded hawk as Johnson on Vietnam? I think he would have been as successful on domestic civil rights and probably not as much of a hawk as Johnson on Vietnam, reacting to the Gulf of Tonkin incident very differently.

Of course he would not have been able to serve as president beyond 1968, and I imagine there would have been a fierce fight between RFK and Johnson for the nomination for the 1968 election, with McCarthy a distant third. If RFK was not assassinated, would he have won the nomination and maybe even have beaten Nixon in the 1968 election? Johnson would have been a strong contender as someone popular with Southern Democracts.

What are your thoughts on alternate history?

Dead Soon

England's last WC qualifier in 1989 saw them clinging on to a 0-0 draw against Poland to secure a place at the Italia '90 tournament.

An absolute fucker of a shot from Poland in the last few seconds smashed into the crossbar, if it had dipped a couple of inches then no Gazza's Tears, no reinvigoration of the game, possibly no Premier League.

Spudgun

Quote from: Dead Soon on August 08, 2022, 10:07:40 PMEngland's last WC qualifier in 1989 saw them clinging on to a 0-0 draw against Poland to secure a place at the Italia '90 tournament.

An absolute fucker of a shot from Poland in the last few seconds smashed into the crossbar, if it had dipped a couple of inches then no Gazza's Tears, no reinvigoration of the game, possibly no Premier League.

That's a really good one. There are plenty of footballing ones that culminate in "...and then x wouldn't have won y", but that one would have changed the whole game as we know it, and not just in England.

The Beatles are my favourite example of this. If they'd never existed, what would the Swinging Sixties have been like? How would British culture have developed differently in that era and beyond? Would the hysteria of Beatlemania simply have been transferred to the next-best northern band (Holliesmania? Searchermania?), or is it possible that guitar music really would have disappeared altogether, as Decca predicted? What would music sound like today?

(EDIT: Oh, and let's leave Richard Curtis out of this.)

shoulders

Quote from: Fambo Number Mive on August 08, 2022, 12:16:41 PMWhat are your thoughts on alternate history?

Tossers, but what if this time they're on the loose rather than inside?

Quote from: Dead Soon on August 08, 2022, 10:07:40 PMEngland's last WC qualifier in 1989 saw them clinging on to a 0-0 draw against Poland to secure a place at the Italia '90 tournament.

An absolute fucker of a shot from Poland in the last few seconds smashed into the crossbar, if it had dipped a couple of inches then no Gazza's Tears, no reinvigoration of the game, possibly no Premier League.

That's a great one.

Gurke and Hare


dissolute ocelot

There are a few what-ifs in British politics.

What if the Falklands War hadn't happened? Would Thatcher still have won in 1983?
What if the IRA had blown Thatcher up in 1984?
Or if the IRA had succeeded in their attacks on John Major in the early 1990s (there was a mortar attack on Downing Street for instance)? Would we have had a peace process in Northern Ireland, or a Tebbit dictatorship?
Did Labour leader John Smith's sudden death make any difference?
What if Gordon Brown got a few more seats in 2010? Would he still be doing a show with Matt Forde at the Edinburgh festival fringe this year?

There's an endless list of World War Two alternative scenarios which are all done to death:

What if Germany and Russia hadn't made a pact?
What if Britain and France hadn't declared war in Germany in 1939 or Britain had made peace in 1940?
What if Hitler had been more competent or let his generals do their thing or been a bit luckier at Leningrad or Moscow?
What if Japan had invaded SE Asia but not attacked Pearl Harbor and the US had stayed neutral?
What if the USA never dropped the atomic bomb or didn't develop it in time?
And even, what if Churchill had won in the 1945 general election? Would we have a welfare state or have entered the EU sooner or be good transatlantic capitalists?