Dark Earth Timeline Discussion

[jemhouston]

Perhaps, while ordering pancakes / French toast at a restaurant, I prefer fruit toppings over syrup.

That said, I'm using maple syrup to soak chicken and pork chops over night. I switch to maple syrup from sugar free version since maple syrup has 3 ingredients while sugar free is a dozen (?) Ingredients.

[Simon Darkshade]

I think there is a single pancake restaurant in this state, and it serves the large American ones compared to the thinner Swedish ones I am accustomed to from childhood. I’ve never had French toast.

Maple syrup is a go-to addition to any barbecue sauce, and gets a big work out at Christmas when used as a glaze for meats as well as a sauce for roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and pecans.

[Simon Darkshade]

For the purposes of comparison, the full lists of states won in the 1976 US election:

438 Reagan: California (64), Texas (50), Pennsylvania (36), Ohio (28), Indiana (20), Florida (20), Virginia (16), New Jersey (18), North Carolina (15), Missouri (15), Georgia (12), Alabama (12), Arizona (12), South Carolina (10), Kentucky (10), Louisiana (10), Tennessee (8), Jefferson (7), Kansas (7), Mississippi (7), Arkansas (7), Oklahoma (6), Franklin (6), New Mexico (6), Utah (5), Nebraska (5), Lincoln (4), Maine (4), Idaho (3), Montana (3), New Hampshire (3), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Wyoming (3)

238 Kennedy: New York (56), Illinois (32), Michigan (21), Massachusetts (20), Washington (14), Wisconsin (14), Maryland (12), Connecticut (9), Iowa (9), Oregon (8), Colorado (6), West Virginia (6), Hawaii (6), Nevada (6), Rhode Island (4), Washington D.C. (3), Sequoyah (3), Sylvania (3), Delaware (3), Vermont (3)

11 McCarthy: Minnesota (11)

Extra State Locations
- Sylvania (proposed state of Superior)
- Franklin (the proposed Tennessee area)
- Jefferson (Northern California/Shasta and a teensy bit of Oregon)
- Lincoln (Eastern Washington State)
- Sequoyah (Indian Territory part of what became Oklahoma)

[Bernard Woolley]

I do wonder what the families of Sylvania look like.

[Simon Darkshade]

Happy, traditional and dwelling in classic colonial houses in many cases, engaging in many woodland-based leisure pursuits, and human.

Given the heavily wooded nature of the Upper Peninsula, the name fairly fell into place 15 years ago, coming as it did from Thomas Jefferson.

It saved us from "USS Superior" as a battleship name.

[jemhouston]

Other than Franklin, I hadn’t hears of any of them. A topic for later research.

[Simon Darkshade]

They are all historical and on the evil Wikipedia.

At this point, there aren’t a lot of candidates for new states, what with Porto Rico being viewed as a special case, given DE’s different US ethnic balance.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Apologies for non-participation:

My 'Man-Cold' or '3-Day Flu' left me feeling totally trampled for several weeks.
Getting past it, my stricken muse is too-slowly re-engaging with creativity, but I'm so glad 'Fresno' had a deep edit-buffer.

Downside, as-yet scant ability to grok others' tales beyond inadequate 'superficial' level...

[Simon Darkshade]

That’s alright, Nik.

I’ve been plugging away at the November events, and even working on the Korean War for the first time in 7 years, on the occasional nights when I get a free run at writing. Not much today, as it was a recovery day after a three day stretch and the joys of two separate thefts within two hours on Sunday’s shift.

[jemhouston]

Apologies for non-participation:

My 'Man-Cold' or '3-Day Flu' left me feeling totally trampled for several weeks.
Getting past it, my stricken muse is too-slowly re-engaging with creativity, but I'm so glad 'Fresno' had a deep edit-buffer.

Downside, as-yet scant ability to grok others' tales beyond inadequate 'superficial' level...

Rest up, you don't want a relapse.

[Simon Darkshade]

November 1976
November 1: Amid mounting intelligence regarding a potential coup in Ruanda-Burundi, the British Resident summons a number of high ranking officers in the Burundan Army for a very frank interview without tea, setting out Her Majesty's Government's position towards any future contingencies in exacting terms - any type of attempt to overthrow or subvert the recognised government would result in rapid and overwhelming intervention that would make that of 1972 seem a model of restraint, and all those responsible for any civilian deaths would be excommunicated and face no quarter under the Ordinance of Purgatio Tenebris. One colonel issues a protestation of both innocence and shock at such theoretical violation of sovereignty, whereupon an undated instrument already signed by both Kings is produced by the resident, requesting British and American support in internal anti-Communist operations; the meeting was concluded with polite encouragement to remember the events in Egypt twenty years ago.

November 2: The 1976 United States Presidential election sees President Ronald Reagan win reelection with 438 electoral college votes to 238 of Democratic candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy and 8 to Eugene McCarthy of the Whig Party, with his victory based around strong wins in the crucial states of California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana, whilst Kennedy triumphed in New York, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington. President Reagan pays tribute to his opponent for a fair and good-natured contest, and offers his humble thanks to the Almighty and the American people for their solemn decision, promising to continue to govern for all Americans and to fight for freedom around the world. Senator Kennedy's defeat is seen as a considerable advance on the result achieved by Senator Humphrey in 1972, with his win in New York coming with a margin of just 9000 votes, and he is considered as having a very strong political future.

November 3: 25 people are killed and over 100 injured in the crash between an express train and a passenger train in Julianka in Southern Poland. The Wroclaw Express rammed the rear of the the stationary passenger train in heavily foggy conditions, with signals seemingly not being visible. Investigators from the Milicja Obywatelska and the Polskie Koleje Państwowe find tantalising evidence of the alleged intervention of a group of trained paramedics who were able to stabilise dozens of casualties before disappearing into the fog, silent and unseen, upon the arrival of local emergency services.

November 4: US District Court Judge Chamberlain Haller rules against a suit brought by the Writers Guild of America on the constitutionality of the Family Viewing Hour, stating that ‘common sense measures such as a voluntary policy to eschew violence, adult behaviour or inappropriate language do not amount to a violation of the First Amendment; freedom of speech is not unduly harmed, restricted nor violated by the act of simply waiting until 9 o’clock in the evening.’ The decision had been widely expected, and came as reinforcement of the prevalence of the voluntary Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters in the face of Hollywood starting to push boundaries of the related Hays Code in the form of the action and battle scenes of The Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian and The Lord of the Rings ; the latter series seems set to continue to be the subject of films for some time to come, with the recent publication of Professor Tolkien's latest work, Beren and Luthien, the second in his sequence of tales from the First Age of Middle Earth.

November 5: Opening of an international conference in Oxford on the modern increased incidence of magically gifted boys and girls, dubbed by some as ’Homo arcanus’, the superheroic ‘metahumans’ (Homo superior), and the curiously psionic ‘Tomorrow children’, or ’Homo Novis’. There is heated debate among scholars as to the existence of the types as distinct groups, with one faction ascribing the phenomenon to the extraordinary use of high magic during the Second World War, and others rejecting the differentiated labels as simplistic, and seeing it as the harbinger of the dawning of a new age. A symposium on the consequences of continued human advancement upon existing social structures breaks down into bitter acrimony, but as it was conducted by telepathy, does not disturb the philological tutorial in the next room.

November 6: Soviet dissident and defector Dr. Z.A. Medvedev reveals in an article in The New Scientist that the Soviet Union has suffered three major and hitherto undisclosed disasters over the last two decades which have been kept from the Soviet people and the rest of the world. In 1957, an explosion in an underground nuclear waste storage tank at the Mayak plutonium processing facility lead to widespread contamination, whilst in 1961, a major space rocket explosion at Tyuratam-Leninsk killed several hundred, including scientists. The final alleged incident is described in the least amount of detail, with an apparent horrific accident occuring at an underground arcano-scientific experimental facility somewhere beneath the Urals in 1966, which lead to tactical nuclear warheads being employed to firstly seal off the facility from the surface and then utterly destroy it; Medevedev concludes that the incident may have played a significant part in the downfall of General Secretary Stalin.

November 7: Albania's King Zod arrives in Britain for a state visit, with his now well-known personal eccentricity and imperious behaviour causing no end of amusement for Fleet Street and the international press. Albanian diplomats and aides make light of His Majesty's stranger proclamations and demands, stating that his thundering order to 'Kneel before Zod!' was merely an example of his equally well-known self-deprecatory sense of humour. King Zod's visit occurs in the background of new diplomatic agreements firming up ties between Britain and Albania, with two new joint airfields to be established for use by rotating RAF tactical fighter and missile unit deployments, and a communique to be signed regarding special navigation rights in the Corfu Channel.

November 8: Nicaraguan communist revolutionary leader Carlos Fonseca is badly injured in an attempted ambush by the Nicaraguan Army of his Sandanista National Revolutionary Front fighting column on the slopes of the Cerro Zenica near Waslala in Zelaya Department. Initial reports claimed his death in action, but the lack of a body and subsequent signals traffic indicate that Fonseca had been spirited away by the foco's foreign advisor through a scroll of recall. The lack of success of the operation leads U.S. military and civilian advisors in Managua, to suggest to Washington that American intervention should be increased; in the interim, several dozen fit young missionaries from the Christians in Action group are deployed to provide emergency spiritual succour to the Nicaraguan armed forces.

November 9: TASS is authorised to announce that the newest Soviet space telescopes have potentially discovered at least four objects thought to be exoplanets in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri A, with two possibly being rocky Earth-like planets of a similar size to Earth, Venus and Mars and a much larger one likely to be some form of gas giant; an American intelligence agency notes the absence of any remark on the characteristics of the fourth. The general consensus of the international space community on Earth is that the discoveries are potentially of extreme interest, but until there are further developments in cryogenic cold sleep technology or propulsion allowing humanoid or robotic interstellar exploration, it is a matter akin to the discovery of the Martian canals in the early 19th century.

November 10: The Italian general election sees the Destra Nazionale rightist coalition of the Partito Conservatore Nazionale Italiano, Partito Popolare Italiano, Partito Democratico Italiano and the Movimento Sociale Italiano emerge as the largest bloc with 318 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, ahead of the Christian Democrat and Liberal Democrats alliance with 260, the Communist-Socialist 149, the grouping of the Italian Liberal Party and the Italian Democratic Socialist Party 56 and various smaller and regional parties with 17. As has been typical since the split between the Christian Democrats and the PPI, no one group can command the 800 seat chamber with an outright majority, but the Destra Nazionale's result puts them in prime place for negotiations regarding a minority government, sparking some concerns on the left regarding the potential for the MSI and its charismatic leader Romeo Beneventi's role in such a governing coalition.

November 11: Royal Jordanian Army troops deployed on operations against suspected foreign backed rebel bands in the Black Desert report encountering some sort of monstrous 30ft serpents or worms in the desert, with two of their number being seized and devoured by the creatures, which had a medusae-like collection of smaller independent snake shaped organs which poisoned the poor wretches prior to their fate. The platoon was only able to kill one of the beasts and drive the other off through heavy machine gun fire and use of underbarrel grenade launchers, which managed to land a brace of 2" grenades in its hideous maw. The remains rapidly decay in an almost unnatural fashion, but some bones and scraps are taken back for examination in Amman, along with copious photographs.

November 12: Scottish mother Renee MacRae and her son are rescued from being badly assaulted, or worse, by her married lover, one William McDowell, in a lay-by off the A9 near Dalmagarry Quarry, close to Tomatin with the ugly confrontation being noticed by a superperson flying above en route back to her home in Chisleton. McDowell is swiftly incapacitated by the tartan-hatted and scarfed rescuer, who proceeds to flag down a passing car of the Inverness-shire Constabulary, which had been the traffic control outrider for a military convoy of a dozen Bedford MK lorries carrying a company of The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders back to their barracks at Brigadoon from a mountain warfare exercise near Glenbogle. The battered McDowell is placed under arrest and locked up in the tollbooth at Culloden pending further inquiries.

November 13: First flight of the Boeing YB-100 strategic heavy bomber prototype, one of the four competing designs as the putative replacement for the aging B-52 fleet, with the others being Convair-North American YB-97, Northrop-Grumman YB-97 and Lockheed-Martin YB-99. At over 200ft long and with a extended wingspan in excess of 250ft, the precise details of the YB-100 are highly classified, as they draw upon some of the technologies in the top secret EB-52 Megafortress programme. On the same day, President Reagan approves the development of the Advanced Strategic Bomber, another classified project employing new ‘stealth’ and cloaking technologies. In Britain, the replacement of the Avro Vulcan with a new generation strategic heavy bomber is less advanced than across the Atlantic, with the exacting nature of Air Ministry Specification B.24/73 makes it unlikely that it will enter service before the 1980s. Greater priority has been given to the Multi Role Strike Aircraft and the Multi Role Fighter contests, with the de Havilland DH.179 recently selected for the former and the BAC P.110 winner of the latter being formally named as the Typhoon. The most surprising aviation development of the day, and perhaps the month, was the announcement that a new upgraded version of the English Electric Canberra is to be ordered by the RAF for service in Africa and other locations, with the Canberra’s demonstrated rough field capacity being seen as advantageous.

November 14: Official publication of the 1976 Defence White Paper, titled 'The Defence of the British Empire: The Way Ahead', and chiefly authored by Sir Charles Ratcliffe. It sets out an ambition to reduce headline defence spending to under 8% of Britain's gross domestic product by 1981 through consolidation of forces and efficiency measures permitted by the advance of technology, with the former to see a reduction in forward deployed British forces to the Middle East and Far East in favour of home based strategic reserves capable of covering multiple contingencies and more effective use of Transport Command's global airlift capacity, and the latter allowing for the redeployment of manpower from a number of garrison roles. A Defence Fund is to be established with certain regular drawings from the Imperial Sovereign Fund to provide fiscal coverage for long term research and development projects, whilst other regular operational costs are scheduled to be reduced through new technological efficiencies. It does not call for any reductions in either British land, sea or air forces or currently projected spending, whilst identifying some rationalisation potential for colonial and African units and reorganisation of current Gurkha divisions into field forces, and rather sets out a timetable for certain increases, including the reactivation of the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions as airmobile and mechanised divisions respectively, and consolidation of reserve forces categories to three.

November 15: Japanese authorities begin the process of returning Soviet defector fighter pilot Victor Belenko's MiG-25 to the USSR, delivering to Soviet officials waiting at the port of Hitachi with the freighter Pegas the first consignment of sixty elaborately sealed crates, each loaded carefully with a number of carefully secured aluminium boxes, which in turn contain several plastic containers apiece, which contain individually labelled and itemised parts of the Foxbat, nicely separated in the manner of a bento box and accompanied by a brief yet meaningful haiku describing each part or widget. The handover paperwork from the Imperial Japanese Air Force, Customs, the Ministry of Aviation and the newly established Ministry of Administrative Affairs runs to several hundred pages, all of which needs to be signed and witnessed (in everyday Japanese, Russian, English and Classical Japanese) in accordance in with recently adopted standard operating procedure, after the formal speeches, display of interpretive dance and tea ceremony. By the end of the process, one of the Soviet officials has to be restrained from defecting off the side of the pier into the waters of the harbour; an offer to delay the next day's consignment in order to carry out a thorough safety inspection was waived.

November 16: New Austro-Hungarian Chancellor, Großfürst Rudolf von Metternich, announces that the Austro-Hungarian Army will proceed with the development of its own family of armoured fighting vehicles for the equipment of their infantry and the fielding of a new 15.6cm medium artillery gun-howitzer in both towed and self-propelled variants, whilst signaling that Vienna and Berlin are looking to formalise their cooperative development of a new main battle tank in order to share the overall cost of the programme. It is thought that the multipurpose AFV programme is being publicly announced in order to increase the stakes in discussions with Spain regarding their potential order of such a vehicle, countering separate recent efforts at courting the Spanish Army by Paris and Rome. The news momentarily takes attention away from the administrative announcement of a second tranche of orders for the apparently formidable Austro-Swiss Oerlikon-Steyr Himmelswächter surface to air missile system; with a range of 320km, a speed of Mach 5.25 and maximum altitude of 40km, it certainly ranks among the best missiles in its class on the Continent.

November 17: 'The Treasures of Tutankhamun' travelling exhibit of the National Gallery of Art, opens in Washington D.C., with the display subsequently to move to Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Des Moines, New Orleans, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is anticipated that some millions of tickets will be purchased for the grand tour, which includes many of the treasures found within the Pharaoh's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, such as his fabulous golden Royal Funerary Mask, and, for the first time in the Americas, Tutankhamun's mummy, kept in a enchanted crystal box to protect it from the air and the sticky fingers of ickle children. It is to be accompanied by six specially trained burly attendants attached to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo should there be any unfortunate events similar to the affair of Rameses the Great.

November 18: Sir Stephen Hastings, Minister of State with responsibility for the Immigration and Nationality Department, gives a statement to the House of Commons on the progress of the Home Office's repatriation programme, with a new high of 10,304 taking advantage of the incentive payments up to the end of the third quarter of the calendar year, 5893 electing to depart for the Federation of the West Indies (where the Dominion government is offering incentives for skilled workers on top of British payments), 3716 to the Union of India and 695 to other destinations across the world. He denies that the government's policy has any xenophobic or racialist underpinning, explaining its bipartisan origins in the response to the 1973 global crash and subsequent recession, and the longer term demographic trends evident since the late 1960s, whereby population growth, whilst flattening ever so slightly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, remains sufficiently high that providing opportunities for gainful employment for those who are now children and the generation following them will be a substantive enough challenge, even in a country with net migration, as changing technology promises to reduce the number of certain classes of jobs by the year 2000. Britain has been reasonably successful to date in assimilating the relatively small number of immigrants, as compared to the overall population, into homogenous British culture and society since the Second World War, and this would continue to be an aim of Her Majesty's Government.

November 19: French Minister of Wine and Cheese, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Chevalier de Casse-Pieds, gives a major speech in Algiers about the progress in the the development of civil society and ‘la normalisation’ in France’s North African departments since the end of the insurgency in the mid 1960s. Whilst it is well received by the French, colons and other European groups in the audience, the reaction by some of the Arab and Berbers seemed distinctly cooler, albeit resigned. The Minister had been touring a number of new wineries in the Mitidja Plain which have been funded by the French government as part of a plan that will see Algeria once again overtake Italy to become the second largest winemaking country in the world, have Grenouille already having hailed the leapfrogging of Spain after its recent travails.

November 20: Thai diplomats and military officials signs an extensive military equipment procurement agreement with the United States at a ceremony in Bangkok, with the first tranche of arms, consisting of 6 corvettes, 10 minesweepers, 80 F-4 Phantoms, 120 A-7 Corsair IIs, 200 Bell UH-1s, 240 M60 main battle tanks and 380 of a new design light tanks, to be delivered from the second half of 1977. Bangkok is seen as one the Washington's most important allies in the region, providing a bastion of bases and other supporting facilities which help maintain the more frontline positions in Southern Laos and Vietnam, in addition to its own heavily guarded border with Northern Laos.

November 21: Reopening of the newly duplicated Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad line, restoring the link between the small Colorado town with Denver and allowing for the efficient movement of heavy equipment, manpower and minerals to and from the South Park Mine. It is anticipated that new duplication project will be built to link up the site with the Colorado Midland Railroad at Buena Vista, amid the greatest activity in the area since the Colorado Silver Boom collapsed in 1893. On one visit through Colorado whilst campaigning earlier in the year, President Reagan declared that, on the basis of potential, the future of the United States lies in South Park just as much as it does in California, New York, Texas or Delaware; the area remains one of many within the USA that is completely off limits to all Soviet citizens.

November 22: A new British Commonwealth exploration programme delving into the depths of the Marianas Trench by bathyscaphe begins, with the specially designed HMS Thaumas exploring the depths of the Challenger Deep over 50,000ft below the surface, following on from the American Trieste expedition of 1960. Whilst analysis of sediment samples and sonar mapping of the ocean floor will take some time, there is an immediate sense of achievement through the identification via video camera of several strange new sea creatures during the descent and exploration, including very large shrimp, sea worms, octopoids and tantalising glimpses of what could possibly be giant squid. Preliminary signs of some sort of hidden oceanic valley near the Deep were also detected, with some sort of thermocline separating it from the surrounding sea, but mission parameters do not call for attempts to penetrate the thermocline at this time.

November 23: Authorities in Spokane, Lincoln receive a dastardly threat from the hitherto unknown group styling themselves as 'The Days of Omega', threatening to blow up containers containing radioactive water across the city unless they are given the princely sum of $1 million. The relative proximity of the city to the high security Hanford Site in Washington immediately results in the threat being taken deadly seriously, and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team is flown in from the East Coast via an experimental Boeing hypersonic super jumbo jet, along with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, a special detachment from the Delta Force and a deputised former Marine named Steve Rogers. The city is scoured on the ground and from the air to no avail, leaving only a chance clue to lead the forces of law and good upon the lair of the wicked group, and their leader, Louis Brackett, who is the only one to escape the raid which secures all but three barrels of radioactive water. After careful considering that Brackett was no mad dog killer and must be after something, young Rogers, having been the recipient of the highly experimental FLAG (Full Latent Ability Gain) serum, flies his skybike to the villain's new lair inside the Great Northern Clocktower in Riverfront Park, subdues him with tactical beating to the head, neck and kidneys and disables the dead-man's switch that would have released the contaminated water into Spokane Falls immediately prior to a children's festival. The surviving members of the Days of Omega are imprisoned awaiting trial, whilst Brackett is confined to the special facility on Jarvis Island.

November 24: A serious earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale strikes the Turkish city of Muradiye in the far east of the country at 1444 in the afternoon, killing over 5000 people in the surrounding region, with over 800 coming in Muradiye alone. The effects are felt across Van Province, with some tremors even being felt over 120 miles northward in the sensitive military border zone around Mount Ararat, where they precipitate a minor avalanche and movement of rock formations on the mountainside, which is noted by subsequent satellite and orbital space station observations. Subsequent US, Soviet, British and French requests to supply humanitarian aid and seismic investigatory missions to the area around Ararat, ostensibly to research the potential for future disastrous landslides related to the tragedy of the earthquake, are coolly rejected by the Sublime Porte, which regards the security of its border with the USSR as an existential concern.

November 25: Former executives of the American Football League begin clandestine meetings regarding a possible split with the NFL, citing the ongoing issues, both manmade and supranatural, which seem to be interminably plaguing American football. The latest problem which has triggered this move, amid ongoing fan disenchantment with rules changes and modificiations, speculation regarding propensity of player injury and 'The Curse', are media reports hinting at a gambling scandal involving players, referees and officials. A number of major newspapers have seemed to display a certain reticence in touching the story, with the notable exceptions of The Los Santos Meteor and The Springfield Shopper.

November 26: RAF liaison officers in Baghdad report to the British Embassy's SIS station chief and its chief wizard that they have heard rumours from Royal Iraqi Air Force counterparts of a clan of vampires seemingly preying upon the city, and further scuttlebutt that it may be associated with a faction of the Royal Iraqi Army. It remains unclear at this stage as to whether this represents a true story, evidence of inter-service rivalry within the Iraqi Armed Forces percolating to the surface, or some sort of elaborate trap, such that the matter is to given consideration by the Star Chamber in London before any action is taken.

November 27: The USDA issues a permanent ban on the use of high fructose corn syrup for human consumption or employment in the human food chain, cementing the interim restrictions of 1969, on the basis of medico-arcane studies into its potential risk factor in the development of metabolic syndromes, the diabetes and sweating sickness. Some corn industry figures decry the move as calumny funded by Big Sugar and the Canadian maple barons, but others see it as an inevitable souring of the postwar 'sweet spot' of the American palate, which, according to recent survey data, has been ever so gradually shifting away from foodstuffs with added sugar in favour of more natural and unadultered options.

November 28: The US Army conducts a test of an experimental 100" supergun capable of striking Soviet targets from Europe, the Middle East, India and Korea in White Sands, firing on a target range in the Pacific Ocean. The sheer size and unwieldiness of the weapon has attracted significant criticism during the development process, with it being described a something of an atavistic alternative to missiles; others have observed that the project may well be part of a gambit related to next year's Strategic Arms Limitation talks in Geneva. The largest active US long range guns remain for now the 25" weapons deployed on the Navy's battleships, with the famed 'Roaring Forties' and Schwerer Gustav remaining in reserve at this time.

November 29: Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry forecasts that the projected current account surplus for 1976/77 will smash previous records, such as last year's $5.6 billion, as the Western world's recovery from the recession of 1973 drives ever higher demand for Japanese exports of industrial machinery, cars, consumer goods and baselines personal electrical and electronic goods. The increasing use of robotics in manufacturing and to a much lesser extent in everyday homes is seen as being one of several partially unexpected factors driving Japan's robust growth, along with burgeoning supplies of raw materials, oil and gas from Australia. The optimistic view of Hideo Kanamori, president of the Imperial Japanese Economic Research Center, that exports can be the initial catalyst which then further stimulates internal demand, is one known to be shared by Prime Minister Mishima. Little short of a disaster seems likely to halt the rising sun at this time.

November 30: German police arrest a number of lawyers suspected of ties to or even membership of the Red Army Faction in a series of coordinated operations across the country. A comprehensive investigation had concluded that legal counsel had been being employed as a means of transmitting information and communications between imprisoned members and those still at large by a very small minority of radical lawyers, leading some German politicians to advocate for consideration of special measures severely limited the scope of legal privilege in such terrorism related cases. Intelligence from a number of foreign partners is thought to have precipitated the investigation and operation, with the impact of Black Monday significantly hardening the opinion of certain unspecified nations across the English Channel towards ever more kinetic and robust confrontation with terrorist organisations.

[jemhouston]

The English has such an interesting way to say FAFO.

I'm happy the Marianas Trench is getting attention.

How much damage does firing those big guns do to the ships? If I remember right when HMS Furious fired their 18" guns, flakes came off the rivets.

Yea to EB-52.

[Simon Darkshade]

Jem,

A.) It is based upon the Churchillism “But after all, when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”

The threat here is quite overt - behave and don’t break the no coups directive; any civilian massacres will lead to all those responsible being hunted down, excommunicated, burnt at the stake and made to pay a £2 fine; and by the way, remember what we did in Egypt in 1956, what with open acknowledgement of use of gas and deliberately undenied rumours of use of tactical nuclear weapons.

It is over the top, completely contrary to any diplomatic practice, rides roughshod over sovereignty, and is motivated by Lapcat intelligence regarding the Ikiza of 1972 on Earth (100,000-300,000 Hutus killed) and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The last factor did cause some moments of reflection to the British Prime Ministers who have read of it, and a general conclusion that it would be a good deed for humanity to make sure anything like that can be potentially headed off at the pass.

B.) There would seem to be a lot of interesting stuff down there, in both worlds. Note the mention of the thermocline…

C.) Not as much as when the 20” barrier was first crossed in the early 20s, with even the 18” of the QEs and the Rs causing some issues. What has happened, though, is that there has been 50 years to work on conventional and magical means of ameliorating the blast issue. That helps.

D.) Many people enjoy a good bomber aspect to a story and world (and I do want to work some into some prose stories when I can finally get the physical capacity to return to more
extended pieces; got to love the long term after effects of heart attacks) and I like to put my little spin on things, drawing in some stuff from familiar directions and quite unique ones alike.

[jemhouston]

Trying to phrase this delicately, but I'm not fan of Homo superior since some in that group might decide they need to take over run things using force.


One of my favorite 13 week series was Prey (1998) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Prey1998.

I'm always amazed when a series that's not spinoff and I like it gets picked up for a second season.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

Trying to phrase this delicately, but I'm not fan of Homo superior since some in that group might decide they need to take over run things using force.


One of my favorite 13 week series was Prey (1998) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Prey1998.

I'm always amazed when a series that's not spinoff and I like it gets picked up for a second season.

I remember that show! Great concept but I don't remember a 2nd season.

[jemhouston]

Trying to phrase this delicately, but I'm not fan of Homo superior since some in that group might decide they need to take over run things using force.


One of my favorite 13 week series was Prey (1998) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Prey1998.

I'm always amazed when a series that's not spinoff and I like it gets picked up for a second season.

I remember that show! Great concept but I don't remember a 2nd season.

No second season. How ever in the episode of The Invisible Man (2001) Exposed the actor that played Tom Daniels did a bit as an escaping prisoner. Vincent Ventresca starred in both series. A fun nod

[Simon Darkshade]

‘Tis a different kind of Homo Superior, with this coming more from the British tradition of 1930s sci fi novels and 1970s television shows, rather than the overpowered Marvel comic book nonsense or subsequent American television shows.

Just as radiation can lead to Funny Looking Kids, the big splurge in high magics in WW2 has lead to many, many more Special Ability Kids, which in turn has lead to the increase in wizards/those with The Spark, some positive mutations leading to costumed superheroes and a very significant increase in psychic abilities.

Apart from a particularly Super chap, the vast majority of DE superheroes are on the much, much lower end of the ability or power scale. Pre WW2, the overwhelming majority were like Batman, The Silver Shroud or at most, The Shadow.

Even Supes is very much more Golden Age than Silver Age, or to put it another way, more like the first part of the first Christopher Reeve picture - catching crooks, saving cats from trees, catching Lois and a chopper and saving AF1 rather than spinning the world backwards. One of the best examples of the ‘high end’ would be from the early 2000s Superman Returns where he saves the Shuttle and a crashing plane.

Overall, there isn’t a capacity for any of the variant groups, if that is what they are and not just a melange of strangeness, to try and take over. The establishment has a lot of its own capacity and magical strength.

[Belushi TD]

Yay, Update!

November 6 - The Russians had a bad stretch there. I wonder exactly what they needed to blow up in 1966....
November 8 - Christians in Action - I see what you did there.....
November 11 - Did the worms deliquesce? That's an interesting thing to happen and a strong indicator of magical origin in the DE universe, correct?
November 13 - Do you have a source for the YB-100 and other planes mentioned, or are they not based on anything in @?
November 15 - LOVE this. My middle child once bought a puzzle box kind of thing to give my eldest a gift card. The box had 78 screws/bolts that had to be undone before it could be opened.
November 21 - Looks like the South Park town geologist is a lot more busy than a certain Mr. Marsh is in other timelines!
November 22 - 50K feet at the Challenger Deep? I know the world is physically larger. Wasn't aware that the depths are deeper. Are the highs also higher?
November 28 - This is similar to the Project Babylon supergun by Gerald Bull in @, correct? I have a vision of it being mounted on an enormous railroad turntable, pushed by a bunch of huge locomotives. I LOVE the bore of 100". 8.3 feet is AMAZING. The Roaring Fourties - I seem to recall these were railroad guns, similar to Schwerer Gustav?

Other comments -

Love seeing King Zod whenever he deigns to make an appearance.

Got to love the optimism of the people running the Tutankhamun tour.

Its good to see the Thais as American allies. Was Cordell Hull as stupid in DE as he was in @?

Steve Rodgers was a Marine in DE?

And the decline of American Football continues!

Thanks for a great read.

Belushi TD

[Simon Darkshade]

November 1976 Notes

- The informal warning delivered to Burundan military officers is motivated by rumblings about a possible coup in the works, and informed by the artificial concern about the potential for significant and horrific massacres in Ruanda-Burundi; there had historically been one in 1972, and more to come. Upon being informed of this potential horror, the general position of Eden, Barton and now Powell is that it cannot be allowed. The heavy-handed nature of the threats is to demonstrate that Britain regards certain red lines as very serious, as well as reflecting an imperial superpower which hasn't been dealt the blows of Suez and its aftermath to her self-perception and regard for what is possible. The reference to Egypt in 1956 is an oblique threat that chemical and tactical nuclear weapons aren't off the table
- Reagan's victory is fairly clear-cut and expected, with a bit of a different electoral map and a rather closer result than 1972. It wasn't at all a bad-natured or bitter campaign, but rather one with the more gentlemanly feel of days of yore. His second term is likely to be even more open compared to his Earthly presidency in the 1980s, given the different strategic balance and global picture
- There is an indication that Free Polish special forces are operating clandestinely in Communist Poland behind the Iron Curtain
- The Family Viewing Hour case goes the other way in a different judicial, social and cultural environment, with the judge in question being Fred Gwynne's character from My Cousin Vinny. Having to wait a little time to see more adult content, which doesn't come close to the historical All in the Family material which motivated Norman Lear's involvement in the case, isn't seen as an egregious imposition upon freedom of speech, indicating some differing judicial interpretation in cases since the 1940s. As of 1976, there hasn't been a rupture of the film or TV broadcast codes, which means no extreme swearing, adult nudity, sexual intercourse, horror and the like on the big or small screen; the action and battle scenes in science fiction, fantasy and epic war pictures is a tiny change, relatively speaking
- The Oxford conference is a little view of the differing developments on the cutting edge of mankind, as it were
- Medvedev has an extra revelation that seems to have something to do with a dimensional experiment gone wrong
- King Zod is a funny old sod, but few people take him seriously, much to his chagrin. Note the different Corfu Channel situation, with an absence of the 1946 affair and subsequent international law landmark case
- Fonseca's survival is a function of the presence of a Soviet advisor, and a harbinger of more American intervention, including those wacky lads from Christians in Action
- Soviet discoveries in Alpha Centauri may be of relevance to the future...
- The Italian election sees a different bloc achieving victory, with the Christian Democrats having previously split with the PPI
- Exactly what the Jordanians encountered is open at this time, but I'll just say the word 'Tremors'
- Renee MacRae and her son don't go missing, with McDowell being nicked decades earlier for less serious offences. Supergran's involvement was a useful coincidence, whilst the bit about the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders will be interesting for Scots and others, particularly the range of locations named
- The YB-100 is a big bugger of a bomber, whilst the the ASB is similar to the ATB stealth bomber and the Megafortress is an ace in the hole. The British MRSA DH.179 will be called the Mosquito in due course, and the newly upgraded Canberras are both more and less than what they seem
- The 1976 Defence White Paper is an ocean away from that of OTL 1957 or the Mason Review, as it aims to reduce defence spending not through cuts, but through growth. New units will be stood up over the next few years, with the Gurkha divisions to be replaced by smaller field forces (a unit roughly halfway between a brigade and a division, akin to the 1980s French 'light' divisions) for greater flexibility
- Japanese actions in returning the MiG-25 to the USSR are very, very 'correct' and overly polite; isn't everything better with interpretive dance?
- Austria's new howitzer calibre seems odd, but is derived from an experimental US one of the 1950s/60s, whilst their AFV programme is aimed at supplying a lot of export markets who aren't after 1st rate stuff due to expense
- King Tut's mummy comes along with the travelling show. Absolutely nothing could go wrong at all
- Voluntary repatriation increases with the sums being thrown at it, and it is felt more from the smaller baseline
- France has a Minister of Wine and Cheese, because of course it does. The wonderfully named chap's speech in Algeria shows how it hasn't experienced the historical drop off from being a first line wine producer, at least in quantity
- The Thais are keen to tool up as the US regional presence starts to draw down to a sustainable peacetime level
- South Park continues to grow and develop
- Thaumas goes down to the ocean floor and finds some interesting bits and pieces
- The Days of Omega threaten Spokane at the behest of Brackett. But why? Brackett is no mad dog killer; he must be after something. And so he was - the resonant sum of $1 million. Steve Rogers will be heard of again
- A Turkish earthquake seems to uncover *something* on Mount Ararat...
- More trouble looms for gridiron, this time on the gambling/betting scandal front
- Iraqi vampires may be a bit more complicated
- HFCS gets banned, with those behind the campaign not being Big Sugar, but physicians. The entire direction of American nutrition and the 'food pyramid' equivalent are going to be a tad different
- The supergun may well be a clever gambit; note the mention of the Roaring Forties and the US still keeping their WW2 booty supergun in storage
- Germany going after radical lawyers is a sign that matters are changing in the aftermath of Black Monday

[Simon Darkshade]

Yay, Update!

November 6 - The Russians had a bad stretch there. I wonder exactly what they needed to blow up in 1966....
November 8 - Christians in Action - I see what you did there.....
November 11 - Did the worms deliquesce? That's an interesting thing to happen and a strong indicator of magical origin in the DE universe, correct?
November 13 - Do you have a source for the YB-100 and other planes mentioned, or are they not based on anything in @?
November 15 - LOVE this. My middle child once bought a puzzle box kind of thing to give my eldest a gift card. The box had 78 screws/bolts that had to be undone before it could be opened.
November 21 - Looks like the South Park town geologist is a lot more busy than a certain Mr. Marsh is in other timelines!
November 22 - 50K feet at the Challenger Deep? I know the world is physically larger. Wasn't aware that the depths are deeper. Are the highs also higher?
November 28 - This is similar to the Project Babylon supergun by Gerald Bull in @, correct? I have a vision of it being mounted on an enormous railroad turntable, pushed by a bunch of huge locomotives. I LOVE the bore of 100". 8.3 feet is AMAZING. The Roaring Fourties - I seem to recall these were railroad guns, similar to Schwerer Gustav?

Other comments -

Love seeing King Zod whenever he deigns to make an appearance.

Got to love the optimism of the people running the Tutankhamun tour.

Its good to see the Thais as American allies. Was Cordell Hull as stupid in DE as he was in @?

Steve Rodgers was a Marine in DE?

And the decline of American Football continues!

Thanks for a great read.

Belushi TD

Belushi,

- The Russkies delved too deep and too greedily, and opened something they couldn't control
- I'd love to claim it as my own invention, but think it came from some 1990s pulp novels about Navy SEALs by Richard Marcinko
- They are a version of the things from Tremors, with a suspicion that they are the product of Soviet monster breeding programmes
- They are not really based on anything historical other than some of the AMSA contenders combined with the Valkyrie and the size of the Buff
- The Japanese are doing a bit of trolling, but also showing how certain means can be used to clog/slow down imports through non-tariff barriers as a bit of a demonstration for the benefit of the Yanks. The puzzle box angle is just a sign of how particular the Japanese can get
- There will be a reason for a whole bunch of them to be employed in the town now
- Yes, the heights of the mountains and depths of the oceans are proportionally larger
- The 100" gun is part gambit, part testing platform rather than something genuinely meant for active use; your vision is very close to mine. The Roaring Forties were massive 40" howitzers used in WW2 and Korea
- King Zod is someone that everyone laughs at but himself, which makes him an ideal character to slip in now and then
- The Thais had no choice during Vietnam, and now know which side their khao jee is buttered. Hull was a bit of a silly billy, but Siam/Thailand was fairly quickly liberated by the advancing British armies in 1943
- This version of Captain America is based on the 1979 film with Reb Brown
- Naturally. It may eventually fall, to be replaced by something far better, but that will take a lot of time

Simon