Re: More future history questions

On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 03:04:56PM +1100, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
>So I'll do a quick summary here (sorry if this counts as spoilers) and
I wouldn't mind getting your opinion on how feasible it all seems.

I love building histories. Even if they had a nasty tendency to have
killer robots in them.

>So Russia's collapse leaves some wiggle room on its borders. He writes
off China as not having enough cohesion and India as hemmed in by
geography and instead proposes

I rather disagree with both. They both have lots of people who see the
standards of living in the west and want them. But pace that...

>1) Japan gets power by first economically allying with productive
coastal regions of China and them militarily going after the Pacific rim
areas of Russia. He goes through how they build up their military etc to
prepare, but basically the crux is 500 mile radius from Japan gets you
from Shanghai to Vladivostok so they don't need a super huge military to
pull it off.

They have a similar problem to the USA - younger people basically not
interested in being part of the wage-slave culture - and often a
similarly rabid anti-immigrant attitude...

>2) Turkey as a regional economic power pushes up into the Caucasus as
Russia collapse and acts as the peaceful hand in the fragmenting Arab
nations/Muslim world and even moves into the Muslim areas of the Balkans
(US and Arab world initially supports them as less objectionable, for
different reasons, than Iran or Israel and Pakistan isn't healthy enough
to step up)

Turkey is fairly Islamic already, and the more the US throws its weight
around the more it goes that way...

>4) 2030s-2040s Japan and Turkey's space presence buidls up, though is
never as large as the US's (many nations also have commercial space
traffic at this point)

Has there been a revolution in the world financial system so that you no
longer have to care about quarterly profit figures?

>6) US puts many of its military eggs in space based command and control
>centres which coordinate the strike capabilities of hypersonic aircraft
>that can reach most of the world's surface (form US bases) in less than
>an hour or so

More likely they're on the ground, the space-based stuff just acts as
relays. But with Project Piss Off The Planet such a huge success, the
tech is certainly heading for "start in the US, blat somewhere half-way
round the world, home in time for medals" rather than foreign bases.

>The Japanese then make a "secret" first strike by launching rocks (with
>rocket motors attached) from secret part of their moon base, initially
>on "random" orbits so just look like steroids so automated systems of
>US "Battlestars" ignore them and even Space tech Joe Bloggs goes "Hmmm
>meteors are a bit higher than normal but none headed for us so ok".

Um.

Have to say I have a bit of a problem with that.

The number of rocks big enough to be useful for something like this that
get closer than the moon is pretty low. And even if there were others
for camouflage, and even if the manoeuvres were done on farside so that
nobody could see the drive flares, a bunch of rocks suddenly appear from
behind the moon when nobody saw them before? Panic time.

(In practice, either earthbound or farside astronomers _will_ see the
drive flares of initial deployment.)

>13) The Japanese-Turkish coalition isn't after capitulation just
breathing space so now push for political settlement - an agreement to
all stay out of each other's way/areas of influence.

The modern US would be saying "to hell with that, let's kill someone
NOW". Has its national character changed so much?

>16) 2051-2052 Germans agree to coalition with Turkey to defeat the
Poles (they get northeast europe in return if successful) and drag in
the French too.

I really don't see the culture going that way. The Germans have a lot
more in common with the Poles than they do with the Turks.

No time to read more now...

R