What If History Was Changed?

How Might a Few Changes Affect the World?

Not a New Idea

The idea of history coming out differently at some key point, and the changes that could happen as a result, are not exactly new ideas. This play on variants has a long history among historians and among fiction writers. Still, always a fun and perhaps useful line of thought to pursue.

Looking at such scenarios makes one think about how things, people, and events are so intricately involved in real life. Any change, even a small one or a single incident, could have monumental effects. Thinking about all this also reminds us that sometimes one player or one act could affect the world in profound ways.

Let’s take a look at a few possibilities to consider. The offerings herein for your consideration are grouped into similar directions, but it will be obvious that many of them, and particularly their potential outcomes, could flow over into the other categories.

Put on your imagination hat and have some fun.

Government, Politics, and Power

1. What might reconstruction have looked like had Lincoln not been assassinated?
2. Capitalism got extremely narrowly defined and ill-suited to make a better world largely under the philosophies of Milton Freedman. What if what is now known as Compassionate Capitalism had taken root first?
3. What would the world look like if Napoleon had defeated Russia (and the Russian winter)?
4. Imagine where we would be today if Mitch McConnell had, on either Trump impeachment, told his Senators to vote their individual conscience? What if he made the vote a secret one?
5. What if Joe Biden had stuck to his original indication that he would not run for reelection and he made that clear throughout his term? Would Harris have been the nominee? Would the available time to build anyone’s candidacy had made a difference?
6. Ronald Reagan began a movement based on feral distrust of government and cozying up to racism. What might the Republican party look like today if he had not become president, but instead someone like Rockefeller had taken the lead?
7. Europe went through the Dark Ages for hundreds of years, the better part of a millennium. Where would we be had that not happened and all those years been years of progress?
8. What if America’s founders decided slavery was unsolvable and instead of trying to manage it in some way, two separate countries formed, one free, one with slavery?

 Science and Medicine

 

9. Edison and Tesla had very different views on electricity. In the end, Edison’s views pretty well won out. What if they had been collaborators instead of competitors?

10. How would the world look now if Hitler had won WW II, either defeating the West including the US or he won because the US sat out the war and chose to make a separate peace?

11. At one point in its history, Apple was so broke that it was only saved by a large loan/investment from Bill Gates and Microsoft. What might have happened without that rescue line?

12. If science had developed to the point that we could change one single element of our physical being, what might we choose? Add a third eye, in back? Build an immune system that could defeat all cancers? Redesign fat management capabilities? What else?

13. How about the question of wondering if other intelligent life forms know we are here but decided to pass on making contact. What will we do when and if someone knocks on our planetary door?

14. We now know that something like 500 species of fish can routinely change their gender, back and forth. What if people had that capacity? How would we deal with that? (Had a hard time deciding whether to put this one under Humor or Science)

 Focus on One Single Person

15. How might Russia and the Soviet Union have developed in the early years had someone besides Stalin, say Molotov or Beria, had been Lenin’s successor?

16. Alexander the Great had a huge impact on the world, even though he died at the young age of 32, of malaria. How might the world be different had he lived to a ripe old age?

17.Genghis Kahn, on the other hand, lived into his 60’s. He had major effect on the known world at that time, with much of the world we know being shaped at least in part by Kahn’s influence. How might things be different had he died young and never ruled so broadly?

18. John Kennedy promised support for major civil rights legislation, but the odds of it getting passed where slim. After his death, Lyndon Johnson made it happen, using his enormous political powers (and, as he forecast, losing the South to Republicans). How might all this have turned out had Kennedy lived?

19. How different might have been the end of WWII if the attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb in a conference room had been successful?

On a Somewhat Lighter Side

20. What if Eve, when invited to dine on a snack, had replied, “No, thanks. That apple looks hard and too large to eat. I think I will have a couple of figs instead.”

21. What if long ago we figured out how to talk to and listen to animals? How much better a species might we be?

22. Would we be any wiser as a species if we knew which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or why the chicken crossed the road?

23. What if early scripture and religious writers were dyslexic? That when they wrote “God,” they meant “Dog?” Now whose a good boy?!

Religion and Philosophy

24. Would the world be any different today if the Christian Crusades had never happened?

25. Assuming the mythology of Jesus of Nazareth actually happened largely as depicted in the Bible and other texts – what if Pontius Pilatus had decided simply to lock him up or release him under restrictions. Would one of the world’s largest religions have started up?

Your Turn

What else is a great/fun/thoughtful What If? Share your thoughts with the rest of us in the Comment section, please. All variants are welcome.

See You Next Week

Probably back to politics, government, and related matters, but time will tell. I do have some interesting science and medicine items to share at some early point.

Bill Clontz

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