2300AD, thoughts and wishes
- Thread starter Colin
- Start date
A
Anonymous
Guest
Maybe dont have an asteroid strike to finish the Twillight war but to start it ?
As Twilight 2000 is based and set of fears of a cold war turning hot and leading to WW3 you could use the asteroid (actually several smaller metorites) that causes so much destruction in central europe to escalate into war.
After the strikes the governments of germany, poland and other surrounding countries are powerless with millions of starving and homeless civilians, NATO & USSR forces are mobilatized to act as protectors and humanitarion support but clash and get into small (but growing) firefights.
After a major battle along the west/east german border the first tactical nukes are fired and this quickly grows out of hand until we have the Twilight war.
So Europe is still the catalyst and the events are the same we just have a different twist on the hows and whys.
Rog.
As Twilight 2000 is based and set of fears of a cold war turning hot and leading to WW3 you could use the asteroid (actually several smaller metorites) that causes so much destruction in central europe to escalate into war.
After the strikes the governments of germany, poland and other surrounding countries are powerless with millions of starving and homeless civilians, NATO & USSR forces are mobilatized to act as protectors and humanitarion support but clash and get into small (but growing) firefights.
After a major battle along the west/east german border the first tactical nukes are fired and this quickly grows out of hand until we have the Twilight war.
So Europe is still the catalyst and the events are the same we just have a different twist on the hows and whys.
Rog.
OldMongooseFordy
Administrator
rust said:
Damn right it could - and soon we will reveal our ultimate plan - flat caps and wippets for everyone!
I'd say, start it with a Religious War, something that can and does cross all nationalist boundaries, then end it, with a Big Rock from Space.
I still like the simple method. War starts, catastrophe happens, records destroyed. The more advanced we get, the easier it is to change and lose information. Hell. Look at any school history book, from 20 years ago, and those written today. Any Country. You'll be pretty shocked at the differences.
Something as simple as a fire can make 20 years of history vanish for lots of people. You can easily lose the past, but you can still move forward, if you still retain enough of what you have before said catastrophe happens.
Still, some pretty good ideas over all in the thread. Keep 'em rolling in.
~Rex
I still like the simple method. War starts, catastrophe happens, records destroyed. The more advanced we get, the easier it is to change and lose information. Hell. Look at any school history book, from 20 years ago, and those written today. Any Country. You'll be pretty shocked at the differences.
Something as simple as a fire can make 20 years of history vanish for lots of people. You can easily lose the past, but you can still move forward, if you still retain enough of what you have before said catastrophe happens.
Still, some pretty good ideas over all in the thread. Keep 'em rolling in.
~Rex
Some good points here. The twilight war well be 300 years in the past as of the start date of 2300, so the why and how will be of historical interest only. I can't name a single war that happened off the top of my head in the 1700's and I'm moderatly interested in military history, but I know that important stuff did happen. I don't think it matters WHY the twilight war happend, only that it did.
"A cascade of international diplomatic failures, ethnic and national tensions, shortages of resources, the discovery of new resources in contested territory, mistakes, misunderstandings and plain bad luck and short sighted self interest started a series of wars that grew and engulfed the globe over a sustained period of time.
Eventually there was almost no corner of the globe that hadn't seen some sort of conflict, either targetted terrorist activity, open fighting, pitched battles or even tactical nuclear strikes. The planet smouldered for years.
Eventually those nations that remained began to crumble and succumb to the chaos and resentment of the people towards their own governments, the lawlessness and the actions of their enemies. The few areas that had escaped the conflicts offered points of light in the darkness, beacons to the hordes of refugees and disposessed.
Those few points of light risked being engulfed in darkness until an almost fatal random element caused humanity to look up from the ashes and into the stars again.
The asteroid 99924 Apophis had long been known to be a potential impactor, with estimates at between 1 in 450 and 1 in 450,000 of an impact in 2039. At some point in the early 21st century Apophis broke up for unknown reasons into two large chunks (99924A and B) and a cloud of hundreds of smaller bodies. The impact slightly altered the orbit of the associated objects and in 2024 they began to strike the Earth in a series of spectacular meteor showers lasting more than a month. At the height of the event 99942B, the smaller chunk, exploded at aproximatly 10,000 feet over western Siberia in a blast that was seen over half the globe.
The remains of the Russian and Chinese armies below the blast looked to the skies and threw down their weapons, taking the first steps on a very long ladder"
From the introduction to "From the Ashes to the Stars: A History of the 3rd Millennium" by Prof. Jennette Macmillan, Harper Collins London, June 2307
G.
"A cascade of international diplomatic failures, ethnic and national tensions, shortages of resources, the discovery of new resources in contested territory, mistakes, misunderstandings and plain bad luck and short sighted self interest started a series of wars that grew and engulfed the globe over a sustained period of time.
Eventually there was almost no corner of the globe that hadn't seen some sort of conflict, either targetted terrorist activity, open fighting, pitched battles or even tactical nuclear strikes. The planet smouldered for years.
Eventually those nations that remained began to crumble and succumb to the chaos and resentment of the people towards their own governments, the lawlessness and the actions of their enemies. The few areas that had escaped the conflicts offered points of light in the darkness, beacons to the hordes of refugees and disposessed.
Those few points of light risked being engulfed in darkness until an almost fatal random element caused humanity to look up from the ashes and into the stars again.
The asteroid 99924 Apophis had long been known to be a potential impactor, with estimates at between 1 in 450 and 1 in 450,000 of an impact in 2039. At some point in the early 21st century Apophis broke up for unknown reasons into two large chunks (99924A and B) and a cloud of hundreds of smaller bodies. The impact slightly altered the orbit of the associated objects and in 2024 they began to strike the Earth in a series of spectacular meteor showers lasting more than a month. At the height of the event 99942B, the smaller chunk, exploded at aproximatly 10,000 feet over western Siberia in a blast that was seen over half the globe.
The remains of the Russian and Chinese armies below the blast looked to the skies and threw down their weapons, taking the first steps on a very long ladder"
From the introduction to "From the Ashes to the Stars: A History of the 3rd Millennium" by Prof. Jennette Macmillan, Harper Collins London, June 2307
G.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
GJD said:
There are a couple of wars that happened towards the end of the 1700s that have a pretty significant impact on the modern world... 1776 being one of them. Like it or not, that war created a nation that eventually rose to super-power status.
Kind of like Yorkshire or Bavaria will do in the future!
Seriously though, I think that whatever new history Colin writes will have to address WHY the EU broke up. Although, the 2300AD European Arm might actually be the EU Arm... that might work. Add in Azania for the mineral wealth and wham! You have the European Arm. Maybe it is the EU that keeps Europe strong enough to be a major player in 2300AD with France as the new leader.
On a side note, I find it interesting that Colin has 4 pages of ideas in 2 days. There is a lot of interest in this setting!
I also agree that the details of the politics that started the Twilight War and the timing of the Twlight War should be kept vague rather than detailed, so that it doesn't become dated.
Regarding the Asteroid Impact. Arthur C. Clarke in one of his books uses an impact in Italy as the basis of expansion into space. Only a few hundred thousand died, but it scared the whole human race and the Space Race was ON. If it is good enough for ACC, it could work for 2300AD. You don't need much of an impact to start a chain of events. It could even be small enough that it explodes in the atmosphere, but over a major population area killing a few tens-of-thousands. That would be enough to start it.
Rule, Bavaria ! :lol:Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
(... but please start trying this long after I am dead ... :wink: )
To introduce the EU as a major interstellar player, with France as the lea-
ding power of the EU, could indeed work quite well, and would remove at
least some of the plausibility problems.
rust said:
This sounds good to me. It's a melding of the original 2300 AD's rise of France with what we now know (EU rising).
Just get rid of that big rock. Ok I'll shut up I've voiced my opinion already on the asteroid. :lol:
Scientific American Article said:
Nasa said:
Sloan Digital Sky Survey said:
Looks like there is a wide range of odds from various experts on the chances of a very large asteroid striking the Earth in the near future. Even so, the best put it at a very rare event.
The middle article does give me at least something to suspend my disbelief of it happening if Colin does go with the asteroid idea.
Colin
Mongoose
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Rendezvous with Rama, and the creation of SpaceGuard. The other Rama books simply didn't happen.
Yeah, there's been some good stuff here in this thread.
I was thinking of an asteroid strike in Kazakhstan, a relatively small one. Chaos ensues, and China moves in to restore order. This sets the stage for the future Central Asian War, as there is now a significant Chinese cultural presence in the 'Stans.
Over in Europe, secondary strikes have caused significant damage. Internal bickering in the EU over how best to handle it leads several nations, including France, the UK, and Ukraine, to go their own way. The situation spirals into chaos sometime around 2025. Most electronic records are lost in a storm of EMP, warhacking, and hardware destruction.
The story picks up again ten years later, with France leading the recovery in Europe and elsewhere. North America is fragmented, with large population loss and displacement due to the loss of transportation and power generation infrastructure. Civil War has broken out in the United States, with Mexico moving to take advantage, "reclaiming" traditionally Hispanic regions. Canada fragments, though with less violence, absorbing some northern states into the new regions (Cascadia on the West Coast, Great Plains, regions, etc). Texas is occupied by Mexico, though the occupation is not going well. Mexico won in purely military terms, but now has to deal with Texan insurgents, employing terrorist, ah, Freedom-Fighter, tactics.
France, using the threat of strikes from the fragments of the Twilight Asteroid coming around again, launches its first unmanned mission in 2044, following it up with a manned mission two years later. In 2061, an unmanned mission departs for the incoming Twilight fragments, with the intent to use a gravity diversion technique to change its course over the next 8 years. This succeeds...
A
Anonymous
Guest
Colin said:
Thats the tricky part thats for sure
Just to get a bit more concrete, these are the parts I think should be
deleted from the original material to make it more plausible:
The Rise of Germany: For centuries, the German nations of Europe
(Bavaria, Hanover,Westphalia, Saxony, and Brandenburg) were content
to live in the shadow of France ...
This is Napoleonic Age Germany, not a single one of those states has
the potential to become an independent nation under the conditions
of a modern society (not enough population, not enough resources ...).
Besides, Hannover is the name of a city. The region around it was named
Hanover during the personal union of the House Hanover and Britain,
and it was renamed Kingdom of Westphalia after Napoleon had conque-
red it.
This means you can have either Hanover or Westphalia on your map,
but it is impossible to have both of them.
The War of German Reunification (2292 to 2293)
The French Army, drained by the Central Asian War, was unable to stop
the reunification of the German states and only halted a German invasion
of France itself at the Somme ...
This is a mix of the War of 1870 / 1871 and the Great War. History rare-
ly repeats itself in such a fashion, and the German part of the background
does not fit, as mentioned above.
Germany ... Bavaria enjoyed French aid and became an established
French ally. Hanover, the strongest of the German states, kept the name
Germany. The remaining German territory became Westphalia, Branden-
burg, and Saxony; the shifting allegiances of these three states worked
against any one German state becoming totally dominant, and against the
the possibility of German nation reuniting.
As mentioned above, this would be almost ridiculously implausible, and
is obviously based upon some map of the Napoleonic Age.
And then there are those "German" names, like for example:
Astronomischen Rechen-lnstitut
= Astronomisches Rechen-Institut
Stracher SS-7 (Scharfshutzen Model 7)
= Scharfschützen-Modell 7
Ohu
= most probably Uhu, the word Ohu does not exist
deleted from the original material to make it more plausible:
The Rise of Germany: For centuries, the German nations of Europe
(Bavaria, Hanover,Westphalia, Saxony, and Brandenburg) were content
to live in the shadow of France ...
This is Napoleonic Age Germany, not a single one of those states has
the potential to become an independent nation under the conditions
of a modern society (not enough population, not enough resources ...).
Besides, Hannover is the name of a city. The region around it was named
Hanover during the personal union of the House Hanover and Britain,
and it was renamed Kingdom of Westphalia after Napoleon had conque-
red it.
This means you can have either Hanover or Westphalia on your map,
but it is impossible to have both of them.
The War of German Reunification (2292 to 2293)
The French Army, drained by the Central Asian War, was unable to stop
the reunification of the German states and only halted a German invasion
of France itself at the Somme ...
This is a mix of the War of 1870 / 1871 and the Great War. History rare-
ly repeats itself in such a fashion, and the German part of the background
does not fit, as mentioned above.
Germany ... Bavaria enjoyed French aid and became an established
French ally. Hanover, the strongest of the German states, kept the name
Germany. The remaining German territory became Westphalia, Branden-
burg, and Saxony; the shifting allegiances of these three states worked
against any one German state becoming totally dominant, and against the
the possibility of German nation reuniting.
As mentioned above, this would be almost ridiculously implausible, and
is obviously based upon some map of the Napoleonic Age.
And then there are those "German" names, like for example:
Astronomischen Rechen-lnstitut
= Astronomisches Rechen-Institut
Stracher SS-7 (Scharfshutzen Model 7)
= Scharfschützen-Modell 7
Ohu
= most probably Uhu, the word Ohu does not exist
A
Anonymous
Guest
GJD said:
Yeah wasnt that a small skirmish that we British got board fighting and went back home to culture and refinement ?
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
GJD said:
Well it did bankrupt the French state and help cause the French Revolution... besides that, not much.
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
Exactly—and why is American tea so awful?
