Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

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Zor
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Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by Zor »

In this scenario three today three wormholes open in the oceans of the world (one 280km east of Boston, one 1200km south of Hawaii, one 550km west of Perth, Australia). Each about 1km in diameter and stable enough for people to pilot a ship through, which the Royal Australian Navy and US Navy manages to do on the ones in the Pacific and Indian Ocean and the USN, Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy plan on doing. On the other sides they US Pacific fleet and RAN find another earth and are on another world, even though the astronomy they find all the stars in the right place and find English radio chatter, as well as sighting large airships. In the Atlantic, to everyone's surprise, a 178 meter long Destroyer sails through which identifies itself as HMS Orion of Her Majesty's Imperial Navy under captain Emma Stilton who demands to know what "The United States" is. Which leads to an exchange of information.

Basically this wormhole has linked to an alternate universe in which due to several factors (among which was the death of George Washington in battle, the adoption of the Ferguson Rifle among specialist units of the British Army and an slave uprising which sided with the British) the American Revolution was quashed by 1782. The Napoleonic Wars were less successful for the British largely due to the fact that a french textile factory owner commissioned Cugnot to build a steam engine to power his machinery shortly before the French Revolution broke out (which caught on elsewhere in France soon afterwards) and the fact that an injury in the leg convinced Napoleon to postpone the invasion of Russia to the point that he never got around to it and eventually an uneasy armistice between the French Empire and the British Empire was made in 1818, though the British did annex all of French North America in said conflict. The result of this was a century long cold war between the two power blocks which made various plays for power, which included several hot conflicts which the empires mostly fought each other at sea in which both empires attempted to make the most of a Russian Civil War, a Chinese Civil War and an attempted Mutiny in India as well as lower key conflicts in Africa and a few in North America (including an attempt to start up a second American Revolution in the south of the US in the 1830s to capitalize on the fears of the remaining slave owners of abolitionism). In 1852 British North America was integrated into part of the United Kingdom with representation in Parliament, which itself was renamed the United Empire of Great Britain, Ireland and North America. This conflict led to a technological arms race and came to it's conclusion in 1919-1926 in The Great War as a final showdown between the two nation which the British Eventually eventually won. The Napoleonic Empire was broken up into thirty eight small nations and the United Empire emerged as the world's most powerful state.

The United Empire (currently ruled by Empress Victoria III along with Prime Minister Dean Maxwell) controls the British Isles, Canada, the US, a Good Chunk of Mexico, India, Australia, New Zealand, about Half of Africa, Hong Kong, a good deal of Southeast Asia and a fair amount of Island territories with a total population of about 2.25 billion, of which about 480 million are Citizens of the Empire Proper and the the rest are Colonial Subjects. It's GDP is $33.5 Trillion. It has the largest navy (about 500 ships in total ranging from subs and frigates to fleet aircraft carriers), army (including colonial troops about six million soldiers), air force (some 10,000 aircraft in total including some 3,000 fighters and 150 Long Range hypersonic bombers) and nuclear arsenal (about 1,000 bombs) on the planet, as well as a small base on the moon that they set up in the 1990s as part of a long term project to colonize the solar system. Australia and New Zealand were both fully integrated into the UE in 1910, as was South Africa in 1952 and there is currently a bit by bit integration going on involving India that has absorbed the Punjab, Delhi, Sri Lanka and Bombay. The rest is managed by a complicated series of offices. There are a few local powers, most notably the Brazilian Empire, the Xin Dynasty in China, the Empire of Japan (which controls Korea, the Philippines and Hawaii), the Siberian Confederation, the Polish Commonwealth (the greatest power in continental Europe), the Republic of the Ukraine and the Kingdom of Egypt though none of them are anywhere close to the UE in terms of military or economic power. Even so due to technicalities on how computer technology developed the UE is about 15 years behind our world in said field. The UE has no particular desire to conquer our world due to the logistical hassle but is open to trade.

What happens and what do you have to say about it?

Zor
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Elheru Aran
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by Elheru Aran »

Is there any particular reason *not* to trade with them and to see if they've come up with any interesting twists on technology?

And is there any particular reason to have any kind of conflict with them?

Honestly while this is vaguely interesting from a worldbuilding view, it's not really a versus the way you've set it out. The only real answer is 'communicate and trade with them'.
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by CetaMan »

Treat it as another area to trade with and whatnot, they probably have a similar tech base so it effectively just links two earths together. Might get the weird thing of finding the other universe version of yourself (provided timeline changes allow you to exist)
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by KraytKing »

Tourism industry would become ENORMOUS. Any large ports near the portals would grow insanely rich, shipping passengers and freight to an entire new planet. A new arms race could develop, with the insanely rich UE firmly in the lead. Of course, blockading the portals would be fairly easy, so the arms race may go the way of elite infiltration units. I can't see much large-scale trade simply because the two worlds are identical, and trade is usually powered by need. Odds are, it's cheaper to trade with someone from your universe. The emergence of this new power may be enough to force new views on global government, but perhaps not. I personally hope it spurs a new space race; if not, I might consider immigration. I would certainly want to meet some people from the new universe, show off my laptop, so I'll count myself as part of that booming tourism industry.

I wonder how this will affect climate change. Billions more barrels of oil, or an already drained world shifting to clean energy?

Some questions: How much of the portal is underwater? Can aircraft be flown through? What is the global population of this new world?
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Zor
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by Zor »

KraytKing wrote: 2017-09-14 10:06pmSome questions: How much of the portal is underwater? Can aircraft be flown through? What is the global population of this new world?
About half of it, yes you can though it will be a bit tricky and the total population of that world is about seven billion, much like ours.

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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by AniThyng »

I can see this alternate world as being particularly disturbing to the People's Republic of China and also India, and they'd begin looking into how they can prop up their colonized counterparts...

Edit: in the case of China, perhaps bringing down the dynasty and installing a new people's republic or whatever. It also seems like very awkward relationship ahead for our Korea and the alternate Japanese empire...

White nationalists will have a field day. I doubt this UE ( colonial subjects lol) is going to be particularly progressive by our standards in terms of race even if gender is no longer an issue.

Heck, the Saudis are going to be in a tizzy too...
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by KraytKing »

So an interuniversal war just got easier and harder. If you can fly a plane through, odds are you can fly a nuke through, and the total firepower you can bring to bear just skyrocketed (heh). However, fifteen hundred feet above sea level is pretty lousy in terms of avoiding antiaircraft fire. Both sides will station large permanent antiaircraft boats close to the portal, while keeping heavier craft nearby in case of naval invasion. It makes a great story, though. A dozen F-22s flying high speed, high altitude, then suddenly dive, switching to afterburners as they go through the portal, then desperately climbing for altitude once they're through. Worst assignment ever.

Anyway, a universal war doesn't change too much, just now you can sacrifice half your aircraft to attempt to gain superiority in an airspace where the enemy has every advantage. Also, nukes, if we want to.
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

If these portals are fifteen hundred feet high, a lot of options for firing nuclear weapons through them won't work very well...

Honestly, the big question I want to ask is how this imperial Britain coped with the post-World War anticolonialism. Nothing I'm seeing in the timeline explains how they managed to maintain India as a colonial dependency through seven years (!) of intense conflict, assuming there was a land war involved.

Is this "world where the British Empire is like a strategy game nation played by a guy with cheat codes?" Or is there meant to be a plausible explanation for how it got the way it is?
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by KraytKing »

Figuring out new nuclear launch options is going to be a pretty high priority. It may simply involve nuking the fleet they have on the other side of the portal, then going conventional. Or sending a bigass airplane. ICBMs will be limited due to lack of a GPS system, and setting one up will be...politically difficult.
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by Elheru Aran »

All that is assuming that they look at it and go 'huh, we must have a nuclear option available' first thing rather than 'what in the world is going on and who are these people'.

Certainly we will want some form of deterrence, but a 1500ft hole? It can be kept defended with non-nuclear options, and I'm not really sure why there would be a particular justification for firing a nuke through to the other side. Like I said, there doesn't particularly seem to be any reason to fight the UE.
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by KraytKing »

The whole justification for the Cold War was "We don't them to have capability if we don't," so I assume it would hold up here as well. I certainly don't think that war is necessary or even likely. I just think our leaders aren't going to want to be caught with their pants down in the event of hostilities.
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Re: Modern Earth linked with British Imperial Earth (RAR!)

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

So, is Eternal_Freedom actually an admiral in this alternate's RN?

There are now a lot more seats at the UN Security Council.

And, a lot more ways to escape the long arm of the law.
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