This is an alternate history that, courtesy of Alien Space Bat-aided shenanigans, would have explored the idea that religion doesn't create a certain number of crazies but acts a lightning rod for them and frees up secularism somewhat in the process. The ASB in question in the Blasphemous Equation, which mathematically disproved the existence of God &c &c, yes I know that it wouldn't make too much headway even if it happened, but alien space bats.
The Blasphemous Equation was published in 1883, a year after the publication of The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, which included the famous passage "Gott ist tott", or "God is dead". Despite what he really meant by those words they were still fresh in the minds of its readers when the Blasphemous Equation was published and Nietzsche, who would live until 1912, was not only regarded as a prophet (in the non-religious sense of the word) but given much better attention by those who accepted the truth of the Blasphemous Equation. Nietzsche's constantly evolving philosophy would be picked over by nearly every influential group to arise in the next few generations (while only a few of them paid more attention to what he meant than to which choice bits served their interests, this was business as usual).
Queen
Victoria was the first major figure to accept the Blasphemous Equation,
declaring her support in 1884 and over the next year reforming the Anglican
Church into the College of England, a nontheistic organization charged with the
duties of expanding the bounds of human knowledge, revering the strength of human
reason, and seeing to it that the Blasphemous Equation was known of and
accepted even in the furthest reaches of the globe. This decision was based in
Queen Victoria's willingness to accept what was true and turn it to her
advantage rather than try to deny it, and certainly helped along by the
nationality of the Equation's creator and the relative acceptance of atheism
and agnosticism in the United Kingdom.
At
least half of the Church of England's clergy were not retained during the
transition, either because they objected to it or because they were completely unsuited to
the new environment. In part because of his popularity but almost certainly
also because it was understood that he would only grow more influential in the
future Queen Victoria extended an invitation to Nietzsche on behalf of the
College of England. He would eventually decline, feeling that even as it stood
presently the British acceptance of atheism did naught to improve their moral sense,
despite the fact that he was still feeling the sting of the University of Leipzig's rejection of
his application for professorship the past year. While he would not ever
officially join the College of England he still regularly exchanged
correspondence with numerous College officials, including, on occasion, Queen
Victoria herself.
1889
was another notable year. While Scotland Yard was investigating the eight
murders committed by Jack the Ripper, Pope Leo XIII, known for intellectualism
and trying to reconcile the Church and modern thinking, was writing a
thirty-page encyclical which amounted to the following: It should be impossible to disprove the existence of God. It is not
something which can be disproved. The man who is convinced by it will say
"Oh, but here it is all the same. Interesting paradox, but nothing
more." How this has happened is clear- God wishes for us to no longer
believe in Him. So who are we to disregard the will of God? This philosophy
came to be known as Pious Disbelief and spread admirably quickly, especially
after some more fanatical believers' actions blew up in their faces by making
the position of continued religious observance look worse. The doctrine would
finally die out in the mainstream partly because of repressive actions on the
part of countries like the Three Romes and White Germany but mostly because Pious
Disbelief is one of those things that becomes very popular among the existing
elements but doesn't catch on to newcomers. In other words, while it's easy
enough for already-religious people to "get it" and join, it doesn't
make as much sense to new generations to believe in a philosophy which amounts
to "don't believe." It's a lot easier to just ignore it as a
curiosity and legitimately disbelieve in God instead of exercising doublethink
to disbelieve in God because God said to do so. Which, for obvious reasons, was felt to be quite alright by the proponents of Pious Disbelief.
Another
interesting philosophy was held by the Self-Annihilationists, who believed that
the Blasphemous Equation was the second part of Christ's Atonement. Not only
the sins of the world had to be atoned for by Christ— by creating the world and
allowing the possibility of sin, God was responsible for and thus guilty of
every sin committed as well. Sacrifice was necessary to atone for this and for
an all-powerful, all-knowing being the only genuine sacrifice possible would be
permanent destruction (temporary destruction might suffice for a
less-than-omniscient being but because He was all-knowing He would see past His
death and to His resurrection, if it were only temporary, which would make it
scarcely worse than falling asleep for a bit). The Blasphemous Equation was at once
the suicide of God and His announcement of it, now that the world was mature
enough to go on without Him.
The
Catholic Church would splinter into no less than eight separate churches, the
seven offshoots denying the doctrine of Pious Disbelief. Only two of these
churches would survive for more than twenty years. Under the Pope's direction
the Catholic Church slowly reorganized itself to focus on charity work and
re-assuming role, once held in the Middle Ages, of spreading and preserving
knowledge.
The
League of Three Emperors was maintained in the difficult times post-Blasphemy,
leading to a cemented alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia by 1916,
which saw the beginnings of the three-year-long Great War. The League would
include the Ottoman Empire with France as a target to hobble in any way
possible, thanks to Russia's rivalry with the Ottoman's. Russia retained its
easterly imperial ambitions and the Russo-Japanese War occurred as it did in
our history, again with a Japanese victory. With slightly-saner decisions made
by the British (who, in this history, did not take control of several ships
they had been building for the Ottomans without asking), and their enemy the
Russians part of the Central Powers, the Ottoman Empire ended up on the side of
the Entente/Allies.
A
couple of years after the beginning of the Great War, Alexander Kerensky
(currently in charge of the provisional government that was created after the
abdication of Tsar Nicholas II the year before) withdrew from the conflict in
order to ease internal tensions and focus on preventing the civil war that he
foresaw as a possibility. Having been allied with Russia, Germany had no reason
to send Lenin over, and the provisional government remained intact until it
lost the “provisional” qualifier. It would be subverted by fascist elements
when the Great Depression struck Russia. Like the Italians they drummed up
visions of being the true heirs of Rome and its Empire, claiming this
distinction through the marriage of Ivan III to Sophia Paleologue, who was the
niece of the last Byzantine Emperor (that the tsars no longer had anything more
than a ceremonial role was ignored by the fascists). While the Russian Orthodox
Church had been dying this whole time, Fascist Russia would resurrect the
rituals (though not the theology) of the church as an essential part of Russian
culture, fusing it permanently with government offices. The Ottomans followed suit shortly thereafter and brought
up their own old fancies of being heirs to the Romans. The Sultan
resurrected Mehmed II's self-given title Kayser-i Rum, or Conqueror of the
Romans.
In
part because of the sudden pull of support by Russia, Germany fared far worse
in the Great War than it had in our history, going so far as to see foreign armies
march halfway to Berlin before the country's surrender was made and accepted.
Hyperinflation and vast unemployment led to a Communist revolution (a
surprisingly proportion of Navy and ex-Navy personnel were Communists, and this
group led the revolution) in 1926, half a decade after the end of the Great
War.
German
Communism would quickly get caught up in racist ideologies and went down the
road of YAY ARYANS. Interestingly, however, their conception of Aryans was more
traditional than our present-day conception of a blue-eyed, blond-haired
Caucasian: the Irish, Iranians, Tibetans, and Indians were all considered to be
Aryan peoples. This may have been linked to the British Empire's hold on India
and Ireland and the German hatred of said empire. By claiming these people to
be Aryan, the German people were obligated to free their enslaved brothers.
Communist elements in the British Empire would grow steadily stronger with each
passing decade. By the middle of the Twentieth Century Communist revolutions would
be seen in most of Britain's colonies, all of them aided by Germany and its
allies (including Iran), and half of those revolutions would be successful.
Communism disdained centralism and bureaucracy and never became the
seemingly-monolithic structure that the USSR presented. Each country was an
“independent republic,” and each such republic was a federation whose
constituent states sometimes got along better with the states of other
independent republics than the ones that were right next to them. As relations
developed deepened between Germany and India and the latter became almost as
important to the development of Communist theory as the country which
originated it, Buddhism- in its atheistic form, of course- traveled to Europe
and became wrapped up in Communism. Communist leaders especially valued the
Buddhist emphasis on asceticism. The term arbeitskomfort became common in Communist writings from that
time on. Literally meaning “working comfort” but more often translated to as
“labor nirvana,” it described a state of perfect satisfaction that existed when
performing one's duties as best as possible.
Ernest
Duchesne discovered penicillin in 1897 after expanding his studies to include
humans, and this did not only result in a lowered loss of life from disease
(including typhoid, which was not affected by the strain of penicillin
discovered by Alexander Fleming) but managed to save Japan, which did not
succumb to militarism. The cause for this lay in the Taisho Emperor, who caught
pneumonia in 1926 but (thanks to the use of penicillin) was able to recover from
it and live for another twenty years before dying at the age of sixty-seven. He
was in as ill of health as ever, though, which meant that the Diet continued to
function more independently and the parliamentary system had more time to root
itself into the government before power changed hands. The Diet would
successfully prevent Japan from initiating a war, but depending on history
plays out the country may be dragged into one regardless. Another useful
medicine developed early is the anti-malarial qinghao, discovered in the '40s
along with a number of other traditional remedies which, upon thorough
examinations, turned out to have basis in fact.
The
Great Depression in the '30s led to what was the Russians called the Великий
работа* or “great work.” These were essentially make-work programs designed to
ease unemployment while at the same time performing some major task for the
country. The great industrialization projects of Russia, which propelled the
country from agricultural backwater to manufacturing powerhouse, was just one
result of this period (indeed, these индустриализациы** or “industrializations” actually began in the
late '20s and are considered to have continued long after the Great Depression).
Work on the Shakespeare-Sangatte Tunnel linking Britain and France was begun in
the middle of the decade. Cross-country expressways, designed primarily for the
transport of goods and important personnel, were constructed in many countries,
the first being Italy. The Ottoman Empire began work on damming the Red Sea,
which would produce near-limitless amounts of electricity. The “Usonian cities”
(more accurately, small towns) of Frank Lloyd Wright (most principally the
first, Wrighttown) were constructed by the United States Government as a means
to fundamentally redesign city living at the time. The four Usonian cities
constructed in this decade would go on to inspire future attempts for the rest
of the Twentieth Century. “Workpartment” buildings housed both businesses and
the employees who worked there, echoing the similar “integrated civic centers,”
vast complexes that included everything from libraries and opera houses to
shops, homes, and parking garages.
*velikiy rabota
**industrializatsii
These
and similar projects like the Great Plains Treebelt (designed to mitigate the
effects of the Dust Bowl in the US) may have been matched in number by more
conventional fare but they sparked the Engineering Race, which saw each country
trying to outdo the others in the construction of projects that had the
capability to change the whole game. As the decades wore on the world saw the
creation of the Gibraltar Bridge in the '40s, the Transatlantic Tunnel in the
'50s (a submerged floating tunnel traveled by train and linking New York City
and London), the Second Nile in the early '60s just before the Three Romes War
and the mile-high California tower in San Francisco some time after its
outbreak, massive seawater greenhouses and a square-kilometer radio array in
the '80s, and the damming of the Bering Strait shortly after the turn of the
Millennium.
Contemporary
projects include the construction of a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar.
TowerTown, built in Japan shortly before the end of the Twentieth Century, is a
massive, almost self-contained structure that stands almost as high as the
California and holds more than 100,000 people, most of whom not only live there
but also work and shop in the building. Tunnels have been carved through the
Alps, Berlin's cultural, art, and historical museum is nearly the size of a
small town, solar collectors collectively stretch across hundreds of thousands
of square kilometers around the world (to say nothing of China's “windmill
jungle”), and half a million people spend at least six months out of the year
on one of the world's several floating cities.
The
Three Romes War was a conflict that broke out in the '60s, waged between Russia,
Italy, the Ottoman Empire and their respective allies. The British Empire had
previously attempted to remain neutral in dealings with Italy and the Ottoman
Empire, both being old allies of the empire during the Great War generations
earlier, but the British Empire ultimately sided with the Ottomans, which
promised to help Britain to crush Communism after the war was over and recover
her lost colonies and were in a better position than Italy to do so. The
post-war map that the British envisioned saw them extending their influence
over most of Europe and their original colonies and the Ottomans taking the
rest of Asia and the areas around the Mediterranean. Germany remained out of
the war (in the end they couldn't decide who they hated the least), as did most
other White Communist countries, but a few small republics did help Russia.
Russia would also be helped by most of the Slavic countries in Europe (barely
any of them were not dependent on Russia to some degree) and Mongolia. Iran
would fight for Russia indirectly by providing resources when needed (while
considered part of the White Communist bloc it was still very much a distinct
entity in its own right and was not even fully Communist; among other things it
still had a shah). Italy was sadly outgunned in this conflict, counting on but
ultimately unable to bring in British support and having to fall back on the
aid of Spain and a couple of smaller countries. The United States just stayed
out of the whole thing and managed to keep a tight grip on its isolationist
policy; in modern times the US doesn't do anything so long as you stay away
from the American continents and keep your finger away from that damned Red
Button.
The
Three Romes War saw the development of atomic weapons and their use in the
final leg of the war when Russia dropped The Bomb on the city of Rome,
destroying the country's command structure and the symbolism of the False Rome
in one fell swoop. It was probably no coincidence that the Vatican City was
within the blast radius; the morale of the Roman Secular-Catholic Church would
never recover from this devastation. With the threat of a bomb being dropped on
London or another city, the British quickly withdrew, and three bombs were
dropped on strategic targets in the Ottoman Empire one month later.
The
support of Russia and the fascist movement by Vladimir Jabotinsky and other
Jewish Fascists resulted in reciprocated support of the Jewish people by
Fascist Russia, which did not fail to note the advantages in being friendly to a group that was
otherwise persecuted in the world. In the aftermath of the war and the so-called Breaking
of the False Romes, when Russia took many Italian and Ottoman territories and
partitioned some of the rest, Russia made sure to erect a Jewish puppet state
in Palestine. It was constructed according to the plans laid out by Vladimir
Jabotinsky years before and, logically enough, was fascist.
The
Jewish people are worth noting for other reasons. A great many Jews turned to
atheism, something aided by the teachings of contemporary Abraham Isaac Kook,
who said that atheism was actually the purest form of worship because even the
strictest Jewish interpretation of God still fell dangerously close to being a
man-made idol. Kook saw the Blasphemous Equation as a miracle intended to “burn
away” every false model of monotheism, which happened to include every form of
religion. Regardless of whether they turned to atheism because they were
genuinely convinced of the Equation's truth or because they felt it was God's
will, nearly all Jews continued to observe the various traditions associated
with the group, which were seen as being tied up not with the Jewish religion
but with their heritage and culture. This explanation did not and does not hold
water with the citizens of anti-Semitic countries, which claimed that the Jews
were fools who still believed in supernatural beings and, worse, sought to
force religion on everyone else. Even in modern times the Jewish people would
find the most support in fascist countries, which only rarely forgot the
support that had been given them by the Jews. Many different groups would
develop from the Jewish people, each differing on which rituals were believed
to still have relevance in modern times, and because of the increased relevance
of Jewishness as culture and ethnicity rather than religion most would reject
outsiders' attempts to self-identify as Jews unless they had married into the culture (and sometimes not even then).
While
not much has been developed in the United States yet, it has currently been
determined that the Civil Rights movement will be pushed back a couple of
decades. With the lack of a Holocaust to point out how bad racism is to some
people who really needed help figuring that out, increased stress, and a whole
lot less success overall, the movement is likely but not definitely going to
turn violent.
Thanks
to Germany still being a scientific focus, German is the lingua franca of the
scientific world even after it turns White. Other large alliances turn somewhat
inward though (Russia, Israel, and their allies prefer Russian). French is the
language of diplomacy, and also the scientific language of the Entente bloc.
Science is by no means a sacred cow in this world; there's as much politicizing
and abuse of it as there was in most totalitarian countries in our history, or
of religion in any country in our history. In most countries a theory is
accepted not necessarily because it is true but because it supports the party
line. This doesn't apply across the board; a country may make heavy use of
scientific racism but have no problem with what the latest chemistry theories
say or the race of who designed those theories.
Russia
and its allies are proponents of the Steady State theory, seeing in it
parallels with the state of man (ie. Just as the universe has always existed,
so too has the best kind of society always existed, as shown by the Romans and
others like them). Lamarckian evolution is supported by the White Communists,
who claim that cultural evolution leads to biological evolution and that
Communist society will lead to the human race evolving into a higher state
while all other forms of society will naturally lead to their members devolving
into degenerate forms. This particular style of racism was in part implemented
to justify the inclusion of non-Aryan Communists. They'll always be less
evolved than Aryans because they don't have as much of a head start, but even
Africans can be Communists.
The
theory that language shapes thought was seized upon by several groups including
White Germany, all of which claim that inferior languages lead to inferior
minds and cultures and that their language is of course the true supreme
language. Artificial languages in general are more accepted. One of the ongoing
projects of the Anglican College since the 1970s is the creation of a language
superior to all others that exist currently or potentially. The Anglican
College in general has decayed into theory for theory's sake. They turned up
their nose at the Engineering Race and focused instead on pure theory rather
than tangible designs and proofs. Every decade that passes, the Anglicans'
attention is turned to ever-obscurer fields of science, some of which only
exist in the halls of the College of England, and most of the tangible projects
worked on by its members are lofty, possibly-worthless things like the Babel
Project.
Soap
operas and talk-shows are insanely common in White Communist countries.
Pop
music is mostly instrumental or mass singing with a few individual celebrities.
A focus has been placed on media that is enjoyable in large groups; while
televisions [incomplete]
In
White Communist countries there is a focus on entertainment forms which are
easily enjoyable in large groups. Cheap “pulplets,” usually derivative but on
rare occasion innovative, are the most common form of fictional literature and
are eschewed by members of the government and others who either have positions
of prestige or wish to emulate such people. Television is usually relegated to
news and talk shows, but again there [incomplete]
The
recursive romance is a form of love story that began to appear in the British
Empire in the late '70s, marked by its protagonists' awareness of the genre's
usual tropes and, quite often, subversions of those tropes. Love stories have
become increasingly more than cookie-cutter stories since the emergence of this
subgenre, which is popular in other Entente bloc countries and in South
America.
The
home of modern animation truly must be said to be Israel. While for most of the
Twentieth Century the United States and Italy dominated animation, since the
2010s animation has increasingly been done in the distinctly Israeli “superrealism”
style, which is difficult to immediately distinguish from live action and is
marked by the reduced cost of special effects. Several movies animated in the
Israeli style take pleasure in switching between live action and animation and
making it a seamless transition impossible to detect even somehow points it out
to you. An older form, still common in comics and paintings, is the
heavily-stylistic “ecstatic.”
Other
notes of mention is that button rifling was developed in the 1930s, letting
rifle and machine gun barrels be produced at a fraction of the cost and time,
and wristwatches are still called wristlets even in the present.
Russia
and Germany became fascist and communist respectively not just because I liked
the idea of switching the two but because I liked the idea of exploring
Russia's old claims to being Third Rome and I felt that Karl Marx deserved some
love in his nation of origin. Despite Marx being a Jew, the Germans are still
anti-Semitic because this would hardly be the first time that people were
hypocritical like that. While it is unlikely that the Taisho Emperor would get
pneumonia in the exact year that he did in our history, it is probable that he
would have been killed at some point without the drug or one similar to it, and
it ultimately makes no difference whether his life is saved in 1926 or 1936.
Abraham Isaac Kook probably did not get his ideas about Jewish atheism until
after the Blasphemous Equation would have likely butterflied them away, but
someone was going to say it and I decided that it may as well be someone who,
in our history, really did say it in that same period of history. Frank Lloyd
Wright was an architect long before the Blasphemous Equation was published and
the term “Usonian” was first used in the mid-1800s, similarly protecting it
from butterflies.
I'm
currently debating where I want homosexuality to still be banned, where I want
it to have been banned up until the late Twentieth Century, and where I want it
to have been legalized relatively early on. Certainly it would be accepted more
easily without religious elements going against it but that's not the only
reason one might speak against it (see the USSR's stance on homosexuality, for
example). It's probably going to be banned, even in modern times, in White
Communist countries, but I'm not sure.
The perpetrator [Jack the Ripper] is a woman, aided by the painter Walter
Sickert, who had an artistic interest in the murders. Jack would resume the
killings thirty years later to the day in 1929. Walter would initially help
attempts to bring her to justice without implicating himself but in time got
caught up in it and slipped into his previous behavior.
Anglican Church becomes humanist institution
No Nobel Prize
A book series recently commenced, with one volume every five
years, which will present the Abel Prize laureates and their research.
Red Sea Dam constructed. Also a test for Atlantropa
G-Cans-like structure constructed
Atlantropa project commenced
The Great Hedge of India is not destroyed in the 1880s
Business Plot-like conspiracy that succeeds
Drive to eliminate smallpox and other diseases
Engineering Race
More barrage balloons and airships as scoutships in the Navy
during WW1
---
[comments from other people who discussed the idea with me]
Aside
from the contribution Jews and African-Americans have made to US humor, people
of a totalitarian dispostion generally lack much subtlety in their sense of
humor: a Jew being run over with a steamroller is about their speed. Irony is
supect, and authority is not to be poked fun of (as long as it is not undermensch authority)
Movies
under fascism were pure escapism. Comedies,musicals,adventures,love. technically were very advanced.
I
thought that was the point I made. Westerns are an important part of US culture
so Fascist American cinema would still have westerns but with a Fascist
ideology, which is (inasmuch as there is one!) Us versus Them. Although Fascist
Westerns may be more about Man coping in a harsh environment, and only
occasionally being threatened by various degenerates, or perhaps about the
temptations of frontier towns.
As
for the American Civil War: The powers that be would probably have a tough time
trying to figure out how to handle that one. Classical Fascist ideology, after
all, exalts the unity of the state, which militates in favor of pro-Union
portrayals. If you're going for more Nazi-style "white power"
ideology, though, you'd want films portraying the Confederate point of view
with the utmost sympathy. Birth of a
Nation would be a good template for this.
Comics were historically common in poor countries
Radio
novels
Suppose
Britain keeps doesn't lose Tanzania to Germany, and manages to consolidate all
the East African colonies; suppose Cecil Rhodes gets his Red Line, and then
some, as the colonies are tied together and have a large white settler
population. Decolonization comes, none
of the individual parts are able to throw off the settlers without bringing
down the wrath of the state upon them. So the only way the black majority can
do so is by hanging together, which means they need a non-national banner to
unite behind -- and essentially, that means communism.
Desalinated
manmade rivers in Africa
"Jewish
philanthropists considered Mexican Jewry a worthy recipient of aid and, in
1891, the Baron de Hirsch Fund, along with the Jewish Colonization Association
(JCA) planned large-scale Jewish agricultural settlements in Mexico, much like
the kibbutzim the philanthropists were developing in Israel. However, these
plans never materialized."
I
recall reading(not sure if this is true or not, but it is quite plausible) that
by the 1860's and early 1870's, there was a small, but growing, urban
middle-class sector composed of ex-slaves and freeborn blacks in Brazil. By the
1900's, they were mostly gone - European immigrants had took their place.
Assuming the above statements are true, if you find a way to revert this
situation, you get your scenario. Actually as late as the 1920's you could find
an important black urban middle-class in some cities. If you look at photos
from the graduation of new teachers for public schools in Rio in the 1910's you
can notice that many of them were black. But when you find photos from the
1930's all the blacks disappeared, replaced by white immigrants.
What
if human meat was popular with the wealthy and was being sold on the black
market?
Of
course, if we're assuming that this is an illegal operation, we'd be looking at
a situation more akin to hunting. I've met a few people who hunt for meat (as a
luxury, not a necessity, it's costly over here), and they regularly pass up the
chance to shoot large, old animals in favour of younger, tastier ones even if
the trophies aren't as impressive. The best place to go, I guess, would be
trafficking networks. Reasonably healthy female teenagers are in fairly
plentiful supply (and probably preferable to uncastrated males in flavour -
it's common across many species). So that's where the supply end most like
comes in. Rural third world girls would be easiest, the less attractive ones
that wouldn't be picked up by the sex traffickers. The next question is how the system would
work. I assume distribution channels similar to bushmeat, with a small but very
wealthy clientele supporting a highly specialised smuggling network. You
couldn't trust the average trafficker not to freak if he found out where his
merchandise ended up. You know, there
really is no way to say whether this isn't in existence. Who'd have believed a
few years ago that girls were routinely kept as house slaves in Europe and the
USA, or that people were smuggling gorilla meat as a delicacy?
By
today, I'd envision Jews to have a position somewhat analogous to that of
homosexuals today. Equal rights in theory, active associations with public
relations wings, activist lawyers and some degree of political solidarity,
with some nations being quite advanced in their integration while others
actively undermine their theoretical equality. Such a world would not be
antisemitic. Certainly not. Some of its best friends will be Jews. But, you
know, do you really think the military is the place for them? How about banking...
Don't
forget about Argentina. At this time Argentina was one of the main destinations
for Jews as well as being seen as a possibility for the Jewish State by Theodor
Herzl.
I've
got one: Australia has an awful lot of uranium... As said, it had a lot of
uranium and wasn't it an important naval base for the RN and USN for some of
WWII? (And you don't need "the bomb" to make uranium important; a
society with a lot of reactors but no bombs is perfectly imaginable, in which
case uranium will be a strategic resource on par with coal or oil (which have
had wars fought over them). Admittedly, it's hard to imagine a society with a
lot of reactors where the ability to build a bomb is unknown, but that takes a
while--estimated at a couple of months for Japan, for instance--so you can
imagine someone trying a hasty thrust to capture Australia for the uranium and
hoping that they can negotiate a peace that leaves them in control of the
place).
Humanitarian
Japan
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