Recent content by Simon Darkshade

  1. AHC: Kill the Fast Food Industry

    Now, the history of British food is one of my areas. Prior to the ‘arrival’ of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1974 and 1965, there was some limited consumption of hamburgers at Wimpy Bars/Grills, initially through Lyons’ Corner Houses and then as separate entities; they were served on...
  2. AHC: Kill the Fast Food Industry

    The rise of modern fast food was the confluence of postwar affluence, the car culture, mass production and a few related factors. Before these, there were still the base foods - hamburgers, fried chicken and what not preceded the 1950s advent of modern fast food - but with far more regional...
  3. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    The cost of ground troops is hundreds of thousands of casualties. It can be argued that there are very real practical and political problems with that prospect as well. Even with the war situation being held back a year, Allied control of the air is both well established and inevitable to grind...
  4. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Do we see the same shut down occurring as in @ with an active war against a better positioned Nazi Germany? I’m not so sure. Some of figures I have seen refer to 3 plutonium bombs and 1 uranium bomb per month, and more...
  5. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Post 1900. I’m loathe to defend that 2009 story, but it did have a single PoD, as well as a very clear authorial declaration that it was being muddled through to get the story going.
  6. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    In answer to 22000 Kevin: As I said in my most recent post above, that is like an 8 year old asking someone “I had an amazing dream last night about outer space! Describe what you would do if you appeared halfway through it, just after the jug-eared alien.” There is nothing inherently wrong...
  7. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    So, additional PoDs upon PoDs upon fictional German admirals, followed up by further changes? That seems fine for a story, particularly an ASB one (and I have liked the author’s previous works), but the approach is perhaps parallel to what is the more rigourous one cultivated in Post 1900. It...
  8. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    A floating PoD isn’t a real one, but many, many ones. Further, by focussing on individual trees, we miss the forest. The Germans were out by very large amounts of scale - 5 million Reichsmarks is a princely 2.5 million USD, for example. Resources include electricity, manpower, steel, cement...
  9. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    That is still well behind the Manhattan Project. From viability to an actual production effort of a working bomb that yields tangible results is a different thing. The Germans considered they would need five years to separate the necessary isotopes...
  10. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Delivering the blows in one swoop in a compounding series of hits. Not only have they lost more killed than WW1 in a space of hours, but it has also had the same psychological effect as Hamburg, twenty times over, from single weapons that can't be defended against. The Ruhr is gone - a...
  11. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Set against that scenario is that the development of the Bomb was aimed at the Germans, who were the greater foe and threat and were the most direct target of unconditional surrender. There was the thinking then, in 1943 and long before that point, that no agreement with Hitler and the Nazis was...
  12. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    For those reasons, if the Americans did elect to go for a nuclear attack on Germany, it makes more sense from their point of view to throw the kitchen sink rather than drop one or two, then wait a week for retaliation/distributing industry/shifting in hostages. If the aim is to make Germany...
  13. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    With 15-20kt weapons, around 200 would effectively remove Germany as any sort of modern state, given that they would be ostensibly deployed against military/industrial targets, but the effects of that type of weapon would take out a decent sized city. The geography of Germany would have some...
  14. Jolly Good! A Bertie Wooster TL

    I nicely approve of vagueness and happiness, which as you say is in keeping with Wodehouse and his world. Africa wasn't a money sink in real terms, costing a few hundred thousand in budgetary terms. The military commitment was very, very minor, consisting in 1939 of 3 battalions in the Sudan...
  15. Jolly Good! A Bertie Wooster TL

    How much capital spending do you believe that Britain spent on the South Pacific colonies; the Indian Ocean islands; and indeed the Empire in general? This may be a light hearted timeline (and Jeeves and Wooster get a gold star), but there seems to be a line running through the previous TL post...
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