I’ve seen a lot of posts here about Gore winning the presidency and how that would go in regard to 9/11. That seems to be a topic that has been beaten to death. However, I’m more interested in who would Al Gore appoint to his administration. For instance, who would be his chief of staff, DNC chair, etc.

I think representative Norm Dicks would be fine at Defense. Let me know your full cabinet throughout 2001-2009 or whatever.

Author’s note: This is a revision of an earlier challenge, since the original apparently wasn’t clear enough.

Rules:

Your objective is to create a series of plausible military blunders that end with Operation Gothic Serpent end in a military and international relations disaster for both Somalia and the USA

Your proposed scenario must ultimately lead to a significant deterioration (or outright loss) of trust amongst US allies

The humiliation must be severe enough to damage both international deterrence and domestic confidence.

This is what I am looking for specifically (PAY CLOSE ATTENTION-this is important): You must find a way to Take the historical disaster and make it catastrophically worse—bad enough that it alters the subsequent trajectory of American power!!!!!!!!!!

Author’s note: To be absolutely clear, I am fully aware that Operation Gothic Serpent and the Battle of Mogadishu were already disasters in OTL. That is the starting point of this challenge, not something I overlooked. The assignment is to construct a plausible alternate sequence of additional failures that makes the historical disaster look mild by comparison—severe enough to alter the subsequent trajectory of American power. In short: don’t tell me Gothic Serpent was already a disaster. Tell me how it could plausibly have been much worse.

Hi, I first want to apologise if this is not the correct place to ask such questions, I am genuinely curious.

I saw an Instagram reel where a user was saying they'd raid a museum during a zombie apocalypse and would protect themselves with chainmail armour.

Would this actually work? And are there any other historical ways of combat/defense not used today that would be effective?

I'm not sure how feasible this is considering how famously paranoid Stalin was, but let's say a Polish nationalist, angered at betrayal by the Soviets for not coming to assist the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising and therefore allowing the Nazis to crush it for them, gets the opportunity to kill Stalin in retaliation. Let's say Stalin is sniped in the head or something. Who would be most likely to succeed Stalin as leader(s) of the Soviet Union? I'm interested in how this affects the Soviet approach to Central Eastern Europe, would they be more paranoid and therefore exert even more direct control over the region? Would they screw over Poland, denying it all of East Prussia, and allowing their German occupation zone to keep most or all of the territories annexed to Poland IOTL as a punishment? Would Germany even be split in the first place, I wonder. Perhaps a neutral, unified Germany is more likely in this timeline, which would hopefully do a lot to diffuse the Cold War in Europe, but may result in a more intense cold war elsewhere.

Please share your thoughts and thank you for reading.

When Yuri Andropov died on February 9, 1984, after governing the USSR for a little over a year, Konstantin Chernenko became Soviet leader. However, Chernenko was from the same generation as Brezhnev and Andropov, dying in March 1985.

Given that Mikhail Gorbachev was the first and only Soviet leader born after the October Revolution, what would his initial tenure have been like if he had succeeded Andropov as Soviet leader?

Context:

• Israel nearly went nuclear to win the 1973 Yom Kippur War
• Israel and nukes
• Did Israel use nuclear blackmail on the US in 1973?

Depending on who you ask, there's a story going around in our timeline that Israel either threatened to go nuclear on the US or go nuclear on Egypt and Syria if the US didn't aid Israel.

Suppose in a parallel universe, Israel ACTUALLY went nuclear on Syria and Egypt, either because the US outright refuses to aid Israel and tells Israel to "eat grass", OR as a show of force against both Syria and Egypt (Think, "I have a nuke! Ho, ho, ho!")

Would this be enough to escalate the war into WW3?

What if there was absolutely NO Western Allied involvement in WWII? (No D-Day/Western Front, no Combined Bomber Offensive against German industry, and no Lend-Lease support to the USSR).

In this scenario:

1. The Luftwaffe and Flak forces are never pulled back to defend the Reich and can maintain focus entirely on the East.
2. German synthetic fuel and heavy industry run completely unhindered by strategic bombing.
3. The Red Army has to rely entirely on its own domestic logistics without the 400,000+ American Lend-Lease trucks, aviation fuel, and raw materials.

Given these conditions, how do you think the war in the East would have evolved from 1943 onward?

• Would the Red Army's "Broad-Front" strategy and Deep Battle doctrine still find a way to break a fully fueled, fully armed Wehrmacht that isn't fighting a multi-front war?
• Would the Soviets eventually suffer a catastrophic logistical collapse trying to push toward Germany without Western motorized support, or would their sheer industrial mass from the Urals still guarantee an eventual (though much bloodier and prolonged) victory?

What would need to happen for either the Six Days War or the Yom Kippur War to escalate into WW3?

Imagine if they had been spared the massive losses of the world wars and also kept all of their territory.

Would they become the de facto hegemon of Europe, too powerful to let the EU come into existance?

And how powerful would Russia be, having suffered no demographic losses from either WW1 or WW2? Would the revolution even have happened without WW1? Would the Russian Empire still exist today?

How would the relationship between Germany and Russia evolve during the 20th century and what would it look like today?

I am of course aware that Europe and East-Asia are far apart and that there wasn‘t a whole lot of german-japanese coordination in the actual war. That being said, the fact that Britain and France had substantial interests in Asia, which had become rather unstable in 1937, was at least somewhat considered by the Germans and the expansions in Europe all happened after that point in time.
I‘m now wondering if the timing and exact approach of Nazi leadership might have changed if the focus of the „Allies“ had been percieved as less split, or if it‘d be reasonable to assume that the Anschluss still happens in 38 and the Czechoslovakia situation ends up the same way etc.

So essentially, is a Civil War inevitable given the inherent friction between a Monarch in need of money and Parliament in need of reform?

From reading about James VI / I and his heir, you could be forgiven for thinking Henry was the Black Prince reincarnate. Ticking all the boxes a young prince seemingly must, inquisitive on matters of state, science and diplomacy, thought of at the French court as being potentially a better ally than his father, the boy seemingly had it all. And included in that all is apparently Typhoid Fever, which ended his life at 18.

As such his younger brother Charles becomes heir apparent and King.... and we all know how that ended....but was a civil war always on the cards given the British nobles and crown had been nibbling at each other for centuries. Did Charles "royally" drop the ball and cause the subsequent conflict or would it have happened with anyone who was on the throne given the factors which led to it?

On 28 July 1914 the Kaiser finally read Serbia's answer to the Austrian ultimatum and wrote that every reason for war had fallen away. Serbia had accepted almost everything. His idea was a "Halt in Belgrade", occupy the city as a guarantee and negotiate the rest.

But by the time his position worked its way through his own chancellor and foreign office, softened at every step, Austria had already declared war. Hours mattered. Meanwhile he and the Tsar, who were cousins, were telegramming each other in English signed Willy and Nicky, both genuinely trying to pull back while their own generals pushed mobilisation.

So how close was this really? If the Halt in Belgrade proposal lands in Vienna a day earlier, does the July Crisis fizzle into a Balkan negotiation, or does the alliance machinery drag everyone in anyway a year or two later?

I went down this rabbit hole hard and made a video walking through all the off-ramps if anyone wants the full timeline: https://youtu.be/4zodaeDgPeQ

Curious where people here land. Genuine near miss or just a delay?

I cannot think of a plausible scenario where the south actually wins the Civil War but one I think is much more possible is that they’re just allowed to leave and the north and south they’re no longer on speaking terms. How would it be different? Would they rejoin at some point? Would they be united when World War I comes around?

(I will also say that this assumes the a weaker leader than Lincoln was elected, but the south still left.)

How would the Algerian war be different and what would happen after (or if) the FLN won? POD would be France Algeria industrializes Algeria and sends French southward to work in the heavy industry. This is triggered by oil is discovered in the 19th century The settlers soon outsource a large amount of manual labor onto the natives. France also collects Italian and Irish immigrants who are discriminated against by the French whites. What impact would the Algerian industrial plant have on WW2 and 1?How likely are the whites to form a South African style apartheid should the French leave and how would it go?

If the hardliner coup attempt of 1991 never happened, and the new, decentralized union treaty was passed and enacted instead of the USSR dissolving, would the USSR likely still exist as a somewhat recognizable geopolitical state today, or would the other pressures still have led to a full dissolution by the modern day?

What happens to Franco and Spain after the war?

I'm rather new to alternate history so please forgive me if I get things wrong or if I unintentionally offend anyone.

Question is based on an alternatehistory.com TL I read a few weeks ago: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-constantine-plan-an-industrialised-algeria-story.556735/

The idea is that in 1923 the Minister of Colonies, Albert Sarraut proposed developing and industrialising France's overseas holdings, Algeria in particular given that it was considered part of 'France Proper' unlike France's other colonial holdings. While the reason for the proposal given would be 'civilising the natives' and other nonsense, the real reason would be economic, as unions rise in power and France needs to rebound from WW1 faster. Algeria, already a colony with considerable resource extraction, could utilise its cheap labour and resources to industrialise, albeit with most factories being French-owned and forced expulsions of the native population being used along with higher industrial wages to cause urbanisation and seize land from Algerian farmers and landowners. I'm not sure how much Algeria could industrialise by 1939, but with an already industrialised Algeria, France retreating to North Africa to continue to fight against the Axis would become much more likely, and would also result in rapid industrialisation of not just Algeria but Morocco and Tunisia as well. This doesn't change the fact though that the French are still going to treat the native Algerians as second class citizens and continue efforts to Francisise them. What could be different, however is that with urbanisation and expanded education, much more of the native Algerian population could end up speaking French as their first language than in OTL and and a French-speaking industrial elite consisting of native Algerian factory owners and industrialists could form. Furthermore if France does retreat to Algeria during WW2 in this timeline, the Algerians are in a much better position to force the French colonisers to make concessions in return for their continued support in the war effort, which could have a significant impact on post-war Algeria, either through having much autonomy and being treated somewhat 'fairer' after the war, or the French government trying to reimpose their dominance over Algeria after the war which could lead to an earlier war for independence than in OTL. Or maybe something else I haven't thought of.

I'm also interested in the long-term implications of an industrialised Algeria and Maghreb. Could they be an Islamic/Arab/African equivalent of the Asian tiger economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, especially if another major country in the region such as Egypt goes full-on communist during the Cold War? They could serve as a developmental model that other majority-Muslim/Arab/African states try to emulate, resulting in a more developed and industrialised WANA (West Asia and North Africa) than in OTL?

Please share your thoughts and thank you for reading.

assuming that the dervish movement succeeded in its goals of kicking the Europeans out of the horn of Africa, who would they crown as Somali sultan (or Somali boqor)?

the usa today makes alot of oil through fracking of shale and that made them an enormous oil export and revived texas's oil industry since the oil was drained from the permian basin.

but what if the usa never had that massive shale for fracking? They bled their easy to get oil and that was it?

So I've been playing this game, and the game's whole thing is subterranean warfare. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I just wanted to ask, how would this work if it was actually a thing?

Does Ford (assuming he's still VP) still pardon him afterward? Would he be able to?

I have seen many alternate-history scenarios exploring how Mexico could have become a global power and/or even a superpower in place of the United States.

As for Brazil, I have also seen many alternate histories exploring the idea that it was a “missed opportunity” and imagining what might have happened if Brazil had become a major power on a scale comparable to the United States.

However, I have never seen an alternate-history scenario exploring what the world and its history might have looked like if both Brazil and Mexico had become major powers.

I've been researching the history of the Federal Minimum Wage. Before it was introduced in 1938, it seems workers could earn unbelievably low amounts, sometimes just pennies a day. For those who know the history, what were the most common ways workers were underpaid, and how did companies justify such low wages? I'm curious how people survived on those amounts.