Miscellaneous, Non-Frivolous ASB Ideas

Eh, the past versions of current online creators probably own what comes back, maybe? While I'm no attorney, I'm not sure how Google can claim ownership over whatever Pewdiepie released (even if it's posted on YouTube, which is a child company of theirs).

'Warsaw Pact Never Gets Nukes'. At least intuitively, that probably makes it too easy for NATO due to the West's monopoly on nuclear weapons, and might also reduce incentives for nuclear proliferation due to the USSR, China and other communist powers finding themselves magically unable to produce H-bombs and the like.

You've raised some pretty good points that I haven't considered. As far as what counts as communist, I suppose that nation-states that institute public ownership (e.g. state management) over the means of production and pretty much deify Marx would lose the capacity to produce nukes. Nuclear power plants are probably still allowable, though, since I think it'd give the capitalist West too lopsided of an advantage if their socialist counterparts were disadvantaged that much  .

On the other hand, the newfound incentive for the communist bloc to invest in chemical and biological weapons pretty nasty. And having thought a bit about the potential for guerrilla warfare, I wonder if that'd drive Marxist powers like the Soviets and Chinese to support far-left terror groups even more than IOTL. By that I mean terrorist cells modeled after the IRA, or even Red and atheistic versions of ISIS due to how desperation to compete with the West could lend itself to further radicalization. At the same time, I'm also curious as to the possibility that established, semi-sane communist powers remain smart enough to not get behind some Khmer Rouge analogue--or even TTL's version of the actual group itself--due to how it'd run society into the ground when a nuke-free communist bloc urgently needs to compensate for its lack of nuclear capacity (namely via investment in other WMDs as said earlier, as well as in other areas like living standards and scientific/technological parity with the West). With those massive ramifications in mind, though, I think that at this point, this scenario probably deserves its own ASB thread lest it take up too much room in this one.

For my next non-frivolous ASB idea, I've been contemplating writing a TL--which I initially expounded in the 'Story Ideas' thread--to be called The Panarchist Network (or something like that). In line with a more obscure ideology known as 'panarchy' (or 'panarchism'), it’s centered on people choosing which of the various worlds/dimensions dominated by a certain form of political organization they favor—liberal democracy, fascism, anarchism, whatever—and being ISOTed to their place of choice appropriately. Maybe as a caveat to prevent the denizens of certain realms from wanting to conquer others (i.e. a Nazified world planning to conduct lebensraum or a communist one plotting to export ‘revolution’ beyond its bounds), people who choose to live within whatever system they've selected find themselves unable to forcibly interfere in the politics of the other worlds.

If they’re dissatisfied with the new governments they live under (or perhaps lack thereof), they’re presented with another opportunity to change their mind. I can see particularly capricious individuals changing which world they live under every so often, which is no doubt helped by the fact that everyone has unlimited opportunities to change which realm they inhabit. It may seem like too much of a ‘get out of jail free card’, yeah—and I’m willing to reconsider that element of TTL, or at least modify it so that people don’t get off the hook quite that easily—but I think it’d be rather cruel, for instance, to force some dumb, naive kid with wacky political beliefs to live under the potentially nightmarish state that’d form if they actually got their way (you can probably think of some more concrete examples of what I might be referring to here).

Of course, I also believe that writing TTL as an overwhelmingly ‘everyone wins’ scenario and leaving it at that, at least in the long run, is ultimately too boring and free of the substance needed to tell an engaging story. As one possible way to ameliorate this, maybe conflict would arise over someone from Realm A accidentally winding up in Realm B. Some cases would turn out rather benign, namely someone from an American constitutionalist world winding up in one dominated by liberal-democratic monarchies modeled after the UK. Other cases, however—such as a military detachment from a global Greater Germanic Reich winding up in a world ruled by basically Ingsoc straight from 1984—would wind up far, far worse.

Another, less obvious peril could be that if the network somehow collapses and people with different ideological tastes can no longer live within their own bubbles, they won't be accustomed to mutual compromise and coexistence like we in the real world are (for the most part, that is). For that reason, a catastrophe that causes the barriers between realms to collapse and forces their diverse populations to live under one roof would cause far more fighting and disobedience of whatever authorities claw their way to the top, likely culminating in a multipolar bloodbath that makes even the World Wars look tame. Maybe you could get libertarians and Bourbon Democrats to be ideological BFFs, but getting fascists and communists to extend the olive branch—let alone to the various non-authoritarians who abhor their murderous, iron-fisted ways—would likely end in a Cold War that teeters on the precipice of going hot, at best.

Those are some initial thoughts of mine, anyway (though for those who have access, I've received apt and regardful feedback on AH.com as well). Maybe I'll add more either here or elsewhere, depending on what else comes to mind and how set on writing TTL I feel.

Long live the Tsar.

But the UN can help them, it will take a long, long time and a lot of effort, but Russia could become a democracy under the Romanaovs.