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  1. AHC: Wank China AND Japan!

    Everyone loves a good Japan-wank. Visions of cyberpunk mechs fill our easily satisfied minds as we see that wonderful big blob of yellow smeared all over the edges of the map. We feel a bit guilty about throwing Korea and the Philippines under the Co-Prosperity bus, but it's a small price to pay...

  2. AHC: Wank the French space program!

    France was the third nation to independently achieve access to space, and has been the leading backer of the ESA since its inception. Is it possible to make the French even more advanced in the area of space exploration? Could France, alone or in cooperation with other European nations, come...

  3. AHC: Weaken the US AND the USSR, post-1945!

    As you all know, the world had to suffer through the whole Bear-and-Eagle glaring match during most of the 20th century's second half. Weaken one, the logic goes, and you automatically strengthen the other. That's obvious. Common sense. Your challenge, then, is to weaken both the US and the...

  4. Historical slavery: Predominantly female?

    The slaves imported via the trans-Atlantic slave trade were mostly male, as strong men were in high demand for physically straining plantation labor. Based on this, it would seem sensible to assume that earlier cultures would also have preferred male slaves. However, that's not the impression I...

  5. Did the Teutonic Knights fight in the "Battle of the Ice"?

    I'm doing some historical research for some writing I'm doing, and I have a hard time telling the bullshit from the facts. This forum seems like a good place to get answers, so here's my question: Who fought on the crusaders' side in the "Battle of the Ice", or the Battle of Lake Peipus...

  6. AHC/WI: Everett's MWI dominant QM interpretation

    I think it's fair to say that quantum mechanics in the 20th century was dominated by the Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg. Various more-or-less controversial polls have shown this dominance to be receding in recent years, but a widespread belief in the "wave function collapse"...

  7. WI/AHC: Abbasid movable type

    The title makes my intent with this thread abundantly clear. The Abbasid Caliphate experienced one of the greatest intellectual flourishings in human history. What if we added movable type printing technology to that? How could such a technology be achieved? When? Who? Where? What...

  8. AHC: Pope Giordano Bruno

    Like the title says. What possible sequence of events could lead to Giordano Bruno, who was as you probably know burned at the stake for heresy in 1600, becoming the Pope? What name would he take? How would he affect the Catholic Church? Could he still be open with his highly unorthodox beliefs...

  9. AHC: Make "mystery cults" last longer

    Hey everyone! Every once in a while you see threads where people ask if the Mithraic/Orphic/Eleusian/Isiac/Whateveric Mysteries could become a major religion. Now, the suggested methods of having Mithra or Dionysus or Orpheus or Cybele replace Jesus often, to me, seem to go against the whole...

  10. Oda Shogunate = Japan-Wank?

    Hey everyone! Every once in a while I realize that I carry with me a lot of assumptions about history. One of these assumptions is that Japan was screwed over by the Tokugawa shogunate, and that if only Oda Nobunaga had been able to unite and rule Japan, the country would have remained more...

  11. AHC: Sweden-Muscovy

    Your challenge is this: With a POD after 1500, unite the two great "frozen wastes filled with scary barbarians"-polities of Europe: The Kingdom of Sweden and the Grand Duchy/Tsardom of Muscovy/Russia. No points will be awarded for unstable messes that collapse in conflicts between Protestants...

  12. AHC: Ideologies based on psychology instead of economics

    In Shikaku-Mon (an althist scenario from GURPS Alternate Earths, and my favorite TL of all time - look it up! It's good!), one of the many changes is that economics is a relatively underdeveloped science, while psychology (as well as something we might call memetics or semiotics) is used as the...

  13. AHC/WI: Non-Japanese "manga/anime"

    Using any POD, your challenge is this: Have a country other than Japan create its timeline's "manga" and "anime": Comics and animated shows that are highly successful outside their country of origin, competing with the cultural products of the dominant powers among young people and churning out...

  14. AHC: Scandinavian microstates

    It seems that on althist maps, nothing fun ever happens to Scandinavia. It's all Sweden this and Denmark that or, if we're feeling adventurous, some big "Scandinavian Federation" or whatever. How boring. But you know what's always fun? (Yes, always.) Microstates! Your challenge is to create at...

  15. Social progress - inevitable logic of history or fluke?

    Hey everyone! In recent OTL history, it often seems like social progress is the inevitable result of prosperity and peace. Women vote, racial minorities are treated like everyone else, people can increasingly marry whoever they want, etcetera. To put it simply, do you think this is the result...

  16. WI: Henry A. Wallace, Thelemite?

    Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and later Vice President under FDR, early developed a dissatisfaction with conventional religion. IOTL his spiritual questing led him to the theosophist Nicholas Roerich, whom Wallace referred to as his "guru". What if Wallace instead had found another...

  17. Other possible "EUs" (transcontinental confederations)?

    Hey everyone! I was wondering if you could help me speculate about some plausible scenarios in which we could end up with "EUs": Multipolar, loose confederations that span entire continents, or at least really frikkin' huge areas. OTL EU is kind of unique in that it doesn't have a single...

  18. WI: The Zohar was never written?

    As the title says, what do you think the consequences would be if the Zohar (also known as "the Book of Splendor"), probably the most influential work in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, had never been written? How would Jewish and Christian mysticism have developed in the absence of that work?

  19. Best methods of interdimensional travel in fiction?

    In multiverse-type settings, where there are several different timelines that the characters can travel to, they need some way to get around. In your opinion, what are the best/most coherent/most interesting/most fun means of travel between dimensions you have encountered in fiction? Feel free...

  20. WI: Ashoka doesn't convert to Buddhism

    Here's an interesting POD that I've been meaning to develop into a proper TL Once I Get The Time And Can Be Arsed for some time now, and I thought I would share it with you. As the title says, what if Ashoka never underwent his famous conversion to Buddhism? What would be the effects on...
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