Take out WWI, and the Soviet Union never comes about. Hitler never comes to power. No WWII. Nuclear weapons aren't invented (or at the least, delayed). No Holocaust. No Korean War, no Vietnam War. You basically take out a bunch of the bad stuff of the past 90-odd years just by taking out WWI.
It's the problem of history, really; redrawing Europes map in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and a century of dancing around the consequences to avoid another major war, made some form of the Great War inevitable. The pressure was never relieved, it just built with each attempt to contain it, until it exploded.
Without the Great War the tensions that led to the Bolshevik Revolution are still present; they'd been festering in Russia for some time before 1914, already having resulted in the assassination of a Czar and the exile of Lenin well before war broke out in Europe. That comes to a head sooner or later, too; the absence of the Great War might mean the White Army wins the Russian civil war due to greater Western aid, but the problems remain, and the fact is Russia was plenty autocratic even before Stalin, so the same Cold War might have resulted, only slightly mitigated by the debt the Czars owed the west for keeping them on the throne. And, yeah, nuclear weapons are just the inevitable march of science; had America not used them it's entirely possible WWII would've lasted long enough for Japan to develop them, a big game changer.
The thing is, though, that WWI caused a lot of these things to happen sooner. While they still might have happened, WWI was the powder keg that set them off.
I'm not strange. I'm normal. Everyone else is strange.
Oosta!
Never underestimate the power of the nerd!
Oosta!
Never underestimate the power of the nerd!
I know I just did a survey, but this was too good to pass up.
07/04/2010 12:44:15 AM
- 680 Views
Myself: World War I.
07/04/2010 12:45:57 AM
- 532 Views
I don't think it's that simple.
07/04/2010 12:57:16 AM
- 468 Views
I see your point.
07/04/2010 01:02:33 AM
- 456 Views
True, one might even say *adding* a war there would've improved things.
07/04/2010 01:36:07 AM
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Re: True, one might even say *adding* a war there would've improved things.
07/04/2010 10:48:49 AM
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I had a teacher with an interesting theory related to that
07/04/2010 12:57:49 AM
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Well, at this time, it was pretty well accepted that Russia wasn't exactly a techinical power.
07/04/2010 01:04:35 AM
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The Plague
07/04/2010 12:52:33 AM
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Re: The Plague
07/04/2010 01:05:35 AM
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He must be talking about a different plague, but I'm not sure which one, either. *NM*
07/04/2010 01:37:32 AM
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Maybe; there were episodic plague epidemics before and after that time.
07/04/2010 02:05:18 AM
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I am talking about one of the plagues not THE plague
07/04/2010 02:50:25 AM
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Re: I am talking about one of the plagues not THE plague
07/04/2010 08:45:26 PM
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I'm so glad you have the time and inclination to type up these replies. *NM*
08/04/2010 07:09:22 AM
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...?
08/04/2010 07:51:14 PM
- 310 Views
Sounds like he was thanking you for saving him the effort of writing a similar reply. *NM*
08/04/2010 09:28:55 PM
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OK, think this one's been pretty thoroughly covered in my absence.
13/04/2010 11:51:16 AM
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The spread of Christianity
07/04/2010 12:55:29 AM
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Re: The spread of Christianity
08/04/2010 09:29:17 AM
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But wasn't Christianity the inspiration for a whole era of art? *NM*
08/04/2010 01:41:34 PM
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Re: But wasn't Christianity the inspiration for a whole era of art?
08/04/2010 01:44:36 PM
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The product of Christian inspiration was heavily Hellenistic in origin...
08/04/2010 07:54:12 PM
- 289 Views
The destruction of the Great Library.
07/04/2010 01:02:59 AM
- 399 Views
Internet spam sucks indeed.
07/04/2010 01:08:23 AM
- 493 Views
We'll never know; makes for fascinating speculative fiction.
07/04/2010 01:13:49 AM
- 402 Views
This whole topic is wild, it's something I sometimes think about.
07/04/2010 01:17:50 AM
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"Joel captures Alexandria! The Great Library is destroyed!" *NM*
07/04/2010 01:08:35 AM
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It's crazy to think that the human knowledge base doubles every 2 years...
07/04/2010 08:49:28 PM
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Literacy and communication have literally made a world of difference.
13/04/2010 09:25:45 AM
- 401 Views
if the giant meteor hadn't destroyed the dinosaurs...
07/04/2010 01:10:42 AM
- 338 Views
"FOR" global warming? Now there's a phrase I never thought I'd here!
07/04/2010 01:16:04 AM
- 275 Views
The spread of Islam
07/04/2010 01:26:11 AM
- 427 Views
oh aren't you clever. *NM*
07/04/2010 01:47:13 AM
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There's such a thing as being right for the wrong reasons, though I'm not sure he is.
07/04/2010 02:12:14 AM
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Wikipedia is of course not a scholarly source, but all the same...
07/04/2010 11:57:01 AM
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Fair enough.
07/04/2010 12:51:16 PM
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Re: The spread of Islam
08/04/2010 09:24:31 AM
- 468 Views
I...do not know.
07/04/2010 07:18:13 AM
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A lot of times, you change one thing, and everything changes- even the things you don't think about.
07/04/2010 12:26:51 PM
- 286 Views
Amusing that the underlying expectation seems to be more along political history lines
07/04/2010 12:56:49 PM
- 487 Views
Here's one that'll be more to your liking...
08/04/2010 10:40:53 AM
- 248 Views
Re: Here's one that'll be more to your liking...
08/04/2010 11:58:27 AM
- 287 Views
Uh...
08/04/2010 12:11:14 PM
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Re: Uh...
08/04/2010 12:15:20 PM
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The Devil is always in the details
08/04/2010 12:29:25 PM
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Re: The Devil is always in the details
08/04/2010 12:32:34 PM
- 234 Views
Not really
08/04/2010 01:07:57 PM
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Re: Not really
08/04/2010 01:10:16 PM
- 273 Views
Only to a degree
08/04/2010 01:27:22 PM
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Re: Only to a degree
08/04/2010 01:30:12 PM
- 486 Views
I was into cultural and religious history
08/04/2010 01:38:24 PM
- 379 Views
Re: I was into cultural and religious history
08/04/2010 01:41:31 PM
- 278 Views
Ha!
08/04/2010 01:49:23 PM
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Re: Ha!
08/04/2010 01:51:28 PM
- 249 Views
Since, surprisingly, no one's pointed it out yet, prehistory/=history.
13/04/2010 09:52:19 AM
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Re: I know I just did a survey, but this was too good to pass up.
07/04/2010 09:04:02 PM
- 282 Views
Science getting on the ball in the 40's and making superhumans *NM*
08/04/2010 05:31:34 AM
- 315 Views
The spread of peanut butter and jelly.
08/04/2010 07:12:21 AM
- 415 Views
I think two spreads that would be better to eliminate would be marmite and vegemite (sp).
08/04/2010 05:30:26 PM
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The head of [Roman Catholic] Christianity.
08/04/2010 07:15:21 AM
- 390 Views
You completely missed the "pick 1" part of the question, didn't you? *NM*
08/04/2010 09:26:23 AM
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Well, techinically, I never said that you couldn't make multible posts, each discussing 1 thing. *NM*
08/04/2010 05:36:37 PM
- 259 Views
I'm fairly sure he was just mocking someone's earlier post "just thought it would be interesting..." *NM*
08/04/2010 08:06:56 PM
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I'm pretty sure of that too. *NM*
08/04/2010 08:33:46 PM
- 268 Views