The state of TIAH
March 28th, 2007
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Alternate Historian's Note: I promised you a collection, and we are working on it – but real life is getting in the way. Fortunately, the worst part of the real-life problems we were having has been resolved. I have found new employment (yay!). We're going to aim for an April release for the collection, and will make more announcements about it as we draw closer to actually making that a reality. And, speaking of April, our Guest Historian, Stephen Payne, suggested that it was time for a contest, so we're going to have an April Fool's Day Contest! Email us up to 3 entries for an alternate April 1st and we will post the best 10, with your own credit and link to your website (if you have one). My lovely Co-Historian says that if we can get 30 entrants, we can offer an ultimate winner a complimentary TIAH mug, but we only have 5 entrants so far! Get researching those alternate histories now, folks! The deadline is March 29th.
in 1979, a broken cooling valve leads to the worst disaster in American history. The valve failed to let cooling water through at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, and the plant went into a severe meltdown, releasing radiation across the entire northeastern US and southeastern Canada. Thousands died from radiation poisoning, and thousands more became ill. The wind currents even brought the radiation to Washington DC, where dozens of members of Congress were killed, as well as President Carter. Vice President Mondale, assuming the presidency, ordered an evacuation of the eastern seaboard. Canada went through similar struggles, with a huge chunk of its southeastern region bordering America becoming uninhabitable. Both countries soured on nuclear power after this, and Canada outlawed the alternate energy source, turning to solar and wind power to take its place. America took a downturn as it struggled to come back from this disaster. For the next few years, the federal government met in Kansas and struggled to deal with the millions of refugees from the east. Compared to this, the Great Depression was a minor socio-economic blip – President Mondale suspended elections and called for martial law in order to hold the nation together. He ran the nation as a virtual dictator for the next 8 years, until the radiation levels dropped enough in the east to where it could be repopulated. The area around Three Mile Island is still uninhabitable, but portions of Pennsylvania were recovered, and life slowly returned to normal in America.
 Java | In 2008 James Gosling released a freeware version of the Java Engine that enabled open source software to run on the Microsoft Windows platform at faster than Windows application speeds. A number of Republicans labeled Gosling the enemy of free enterprise and proposed legislation to stop the engine from being freely distributed. |
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge! | |
| In 1969 Deputy Interim Prime Minister Major General Ord Wingate, DSO announced a series of measures to dampen industrial unrest in the United Kingdom. Effectively, the measures represented military control of supply routes, logistics and primary extraction in order to prevent a Second General Strike. |  Ord Wingate |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
 Detail of Franz.. | In 1854 France declared war on Russia, allying herself with Britain in the Crimean War. Whilst in theory France and Russia had a shared interest in preventing the German hegemony of Europe they were at loggerheads for the next century and a half, as the European monarchies pursued a containment policy towards democracy. |
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge! | |
| In 845 the semi-legendary king of Sweden and Denmark Ragnar Lodbrok destroyed Paris. With 120 ships and 5,000 Viking warriors, he landed in modern France, probably at the Seine estuary, and ravaged West Francia, as the westernmost part of the Frankish empire was then known. Paris was also captured in this year and held ransom .. |  Aella murdering.. |
| .. by Viking raiders led by Ragnar Lodbrok. The traditional date for this is March 28, which is today referred to as Ragnar Lodbrok Day by certain followers of the Asatru religion. The King of West Francia, Charlemagne's grandson Charles the Bald, paid him a fantastic amount of money, 7,000 pounds of silver not to destroy the city. Ragnar Lodbrok took the money and also sacked Paris before being murdered by Aella. The seat of government moved to the more strategic location of Marseilles where it remains to this day. France as a result has a more Mediterranean perspective and considers North African states to be its neighbours. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
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1 comment:
This just isn't a plausible scenario. At Chernobyl you had a complete steam explosion with no containment, a graphite moderator that caught on fire further spreading the core material and still the only people that died of radiation poisoning were the workers at the plant. The most significant macroscopic effect was a short lived spike in thyroid cancers.
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