Future AH Scenarios

[Zyobot]

While technically not historical by definition, future history is a subject matter we nonetheless like to discuss both here and on other AH boards. Not only does making serious predictions and extrapolations about the future generate yet more hypothetical discussion, it can also help show (or at least, suggest) continuity between long-running historical trends, current events, and whatever the future holds a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred-thousand years from now.

Having said that, today will eventually give way to tomorrow, and thus fade into history like every other once-current event before it. Furthermore, since there are likely to be AH communities in said future, I'm curious as to what kinds of PoDs they're likely to discuss? Obviously, this is a speculation-heavy topic, as not only are the more traditional counterfactuals we talk about inherently conjectural, but we're also forced to sketch out OTL future, in order to surmise what sorts of missed opportunities--as well as thankfully avoided catastrophes--our more AH-inclined descendants will likely discuss. Some of which, I may even be able to chime in on myself (assuming that I live a long, healthy life and see plenty of history made over the years).

Thank you in advance,

Zyobot

[Zyobot]

One scenario I recently remembered is 'US Never Becomes A Superpower'. Obviously, this one has game-changing implications for the here and now, as the post-WW2 global order is tied to American supremacy. People all over the world watch its movies, it fields the world's greatest military, it's the hub of the global economy, and it carries on an ancestral tradition of worldwide cultural/linguistic dominance inherited from the British Empire.

Naturally, it makes sense to butterfly the US's superpower status, if you want to create a considerably different history with compounding affects that really throw things off-course centuries and millennia down the line. That, and considering that America's reign has yet to end, we can't know for sure what its ultimate legacy will be (and therefore, what the full ramifications are of preventing it from reaching the heights that it did IOTL). Future AH communities and professional historians will enjoy the benefit of hindsight where we do not, of course, though we can probably put forth tentative guesses based on presently available knowledge and the current trajectory of things (i.e. the US being relegated to first place among a multipolar body of nations in the early twenty-first century).

[Zyobot]

Since it was mentioned in this thread's AH.com counterpart, I imagine that PoDs involving mass-nuclear exchanges in general (but particularly the Cold War, for obvious reasons) will receive significant attention in future AH communities, especially if said communities live in a space-faring civilization(s) that never could've emerged, had incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis gone hot. At least with the Fall of Rome or the Bronze Age Collapse, you could be reasonably sure that someone out there would survive and rebuild eventually. With something like the 1983 Soviet false-alarm incident, not so much, so I'd think that future civilizations will be much more cognizant of how their ancestors could've easily destroyed themselves and aborted all hopes of humanity having a future to speak of.

[stevep]

Sept 18, 2021 20:33:13 GMT Zyobot said:

Since it was mentioned in this thread's AH.com counterpart, I imagine that PoDs involving mass-nuclear exchanges in general (but particularly the Cold War, for obvious reasons) will receive significant attention in future AH communities, especially if said communities live in a space-faring civilization(s) that never could've emerged, had incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis gone hot. At least with the Fall of Rome or the Bronze Age Collapse, you could be reasonably sure that someone out there would survive and rebuild eventually. With something like the 1983 Soviet false-alarm incident, not so much, so I'd think that future civilizations will be much more cognizant of how their ancestors could've easily destroyed themselves and aborted all hopes of humanity having a future to speak of.

  Well that and the assorted environmental problems, climate change, resource depletion, different types of pollution.  Up timers, especially in artificial environments or on planets that required a fair amount of terraforming are definitely going to be aware of issues like that as well.

[Zyobot]

Sept 19, 2021 12:37:00 GMT stevep said:

Sept 18, 2021 20:33:13 GMT Zyobot said:

Since it was mentioned in this thread's AH.com counterpart, I imagine that PoDs involving mass-nuclear exchanges in general (but particularly the Cold War, for obvious reasons) will receive significant attention in future AH communities, especially if said communities live in a space-faring civilization(s) that never could've emerged, had incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis gone hot. At least with the Fall of Rome or the Bronze Age Collapse, you could be reasonably sure that someone out there would survive and rebuild eventually. With something like the 1983 Soviet false-alarm incident, not so much, so I'd think that future civilizations will be much more cognizant of how their ancestors could've easily destroyed themselves and aborted all hopes of humanity having a future to speak of.

  Well that and the assorted environmental problems, climate change, resource depletion, different types of pollution.  Up timers, especially in artificial environments or on planets that required a fair amount of terraforming are definitely going to be aware of issues like that as well.

By this, do you mean the run-off affects that'd only compound the initial inferno of nuclear destruction, or are you referring to a separate issue? Either way, I certainly agree, though here's to hoping that climate change is manageable and that all the assorted parties get their act together in the meantime.

Ditto since terraforming would obviously have profound climactic impacts, with even a cursory look at the history of climate science showing that it really gained traction in the twentieth century and persisted as a problem well into the twenty-first. Given how it's a matter of human survival rather than the collapse of one or two societies whose descendants eventually rebuilt, the fact that the whole interplanetary civilization(s) they built couldn't have existed without environmental preservation or averting a global nuclear exchange centuries before will probably be on their minds more than the Fall of Rome is for us (and not just because of how much closer the Cold War would be to their time than Rome is to ours!).

[stevep]

Sept 19, 2021 16:41:24 GMT Zyobot said:

Sept 19, 2021 12:37:00 GMT stevep said:

  Well that and the assorted environmental problems, climate change, resource depletion, different types of pollution.  Up timers, especially in artificial environments or on planets that required a fair amount of terraforming are definitely going to be aware of issues like that as well.

By this, do you mean the run-off affects that'd only compound the initial inferno of nuclear destruction, or are you referring to a separate issue? Either way, I certainly agree, though here's to hoping that climate change is manageable and that all the assorted parties get their act together in the meantime.

Ditto since terraforming would obviously have profound climactic impacts, with even a cursory look at the history of climate science showing that it really gained traction in the twentieth century and persisted as a problem well into the twenty-first. Given how it's a matter of human survival rather than the collapse of one or two societies whose descendants eventually rebuilt, the fact that the whole interplanetary civilization(s) they built couldn't have existed without environmental preservation or averting a global nuclear exchange centuries before will probably be on their minds more than the Fall of Rome is for us (and not just because of how much closer the Cold War would be to their time than Rome is to ours!).

  I'm thinking primarily of the current threats we're facing now without some idiot triggering a widespread nuclear exchange.  Adding that last on would make matters worse, at least in the short run. 

[Zyobot]

Sept 19, 2021 17:36:47 GMT stevep said:

Sept 19, 2021 16:41:24 GMT Zyobot said:

By this, do you mean the run-off affects that'd only compound the initial inferno of nuclear destruction, or are you referring to a separate issue? Either way, I certainly agree, though here's to hoping that climate change is manageable and that all the assorted parties get their act together in the meantime.

Ditto since terraforming would obviously have profound climactic impacts, with even a cursory look at the history of climate science showing that it really gained traction in the twentieth century and persisted as a problem well into the twenty-first. Given how it's a matter of human survival rather than the collapse of one or two societies whose descendants eventually rebuilt, the fact that the whole interplanetary civilization(s) they built couldn't have existed without environmental preservation or averting a global nuclear exchange centuries before will probably be on their minds more than the Fall of Rome is for us (and not just because of how much closer the Cold War would be to their time than Rome is to ours!).

  I'm thinking primarily of the current threats we're facing now without some idiot triggering a widespread nuclear exchange.  Adding that last on would make matters worse, at least in the short run. 

No surprises there, man. No surprises there.

Another one I just thought of is 'Space Race Never Ends'? True, we've certainly seen revived enthusiasm that private space companies have capitalized on over the last decade or so, but what I'm referring to is the Americans and the Soviets continuing to compete over space well past 1975. Depending on how such an alternate TL unfolds, the US government might outsource space exploration to private companies anyway, since sustained competition would mean that it'll want to have its cake and eat it, too (despite no longer wanting to spend as much on NASA, for whatever reason). Different paths that could've been taken to reach the stars will be a subject of significant interest to space-faring AH communities in the future, I imagine.