For All Mankind

[clearspira]

The problem I have with the show from what I've seen so far is that i just do not buy this as a credible alternate history.

Y'know what I think would have happened in real life if the Soviets beat us to the Moon? Pretty much nothing besides some patsy losing his job.

A moon base, progressive rights for women off the back of it, an Apollo program into the twenties, the election being damaged. I just do not buy it, sorry.

I agree with the other comments. Liatening to Chuck is making this interesting for me.

[J!!]

Maybe

Nixon considered the whole thing a waste of time and money, and it's generally believed that he would've canceled the project if not for the fact that the public was so invested in seeing JFK's dream succeed. So it's possible he would've used this as an excuse to do so.

But Nixon was also a vindictive bastard, who took shit like this really personal. So it's entirely believable that he would've escalated things rather than take the L. Especially if he thought the public would blame him for the failure.

And then, if Bobby beat him in the next election, which is quite possible if not for the accident, he almost certainly would've kept things going for the sake of his brother's legacy.

Add to that the threat of the USSR gaining some sort of strategic advantage, whether via off-world resource acquisition, or space-based weaponry. And yeah, I can totally see things going at least as far as they do by end of season 1.

[TGLS]

The problem I have with the show from what I've seen so far is that i just do not buy this as a credible alternate history.

Y'know what I think would have happened in real life if the Soviets beat us to the Moon? Pretty much nothing besides some patsy losing his job.

I mean a lot of alternate history can bend like that. If Napoleon won at Waterloo, the most likely outcome is Napoleon loses anyway. If Franz Ferdinand wasn't shot, there'd probably be another thing that would trigger off a very similar war. If the Confederacy won at pretty much any battle they had, the Union would likely have triumphed anyway. If 9/11 were foiled, the War on Terror would proceed regardless. If Blockbuster bought Netflix, streaming services would have crushed mail order rentals all the same. If Nintendo and Sony developed the Super CD, it probably wouldn't be very impressive or change anything.

But history isn't always the most likely outcome. If someone was examining the situation in 1703 and was asked, "Will the Indian Subcontinent be dominated by one government in a century?" they'd probably answer "No." If they were asked, "Which government is the most likely to dominate India", the East India Company, who's military forces at the time were mostly warehouse guards, would be at the bottom of the list.

Things don't change much is always a plausible outcome, but who wants to read stories where nothing really changes?

[stellar_coyote]

Chuck glosses over Ted Kennedy's car accident, and in fairness that isn't what the video is about. But for those of you who don't know, He killed a woman (albeit accidentally) and then fled the scene of the crime. And this wasn't a small momentary bout of forgetfulness. It took him anywhere up to ten hours to come clean as to what happened.

Fleeing a death you caused is a big no, no. It shows huge moral failings of character.

And that is actually the generous interpretation. Because it was also concluded that he must have been driving his car far too recklessly for the road and conditions as opposed to this being a mere simple accident. A man less famous may have been brought up on manslaughter.

I realise that there have been far worse candidates for the presidency since Teddy, but this man was not fit for the big office.

"Nothing bad ever happens to the Kennedys!"
Yes, it's the obvious joke, but I'd still say it's a classic.

[CrypticMirror]

If 9/11 were foiled, the War on Terror would proceed regardless.

I'll quibble on that point only, and in a limited way, the war in Afghanistan would not have happened. We'd have skipped straight to the war in Iraq phase, which was George Bush Jr's preferred war all along. That is just because he had a thing about Iraq because of his father issues. He'd at least have had a harder time pushing the surveillance state apparatus so that would be a lot milder, we'd probably still be able to keep our shoes on and take bottles of soda when flying, and it would have probably been over a lot quicker. I'd also wager that American Muslims would not have been the primary target for the wedge issues, but it would hit Mexican Americans and LGBT people a lot harder as they would be primary targets for Republican wedge issues.

[m4a2000]

The "poor dumb Harry" jokes was so nice to have back. Keep up the work!

[Makeshift Python]

Things don't change much is always a plausible outcome, but who wants to read stories where nothing really changes?

That and it's just a TV show, with nerds having fun toying with history. That's just the nature of what if stories, you're supposed to have fun with it to an extent. Like Ron Moore acknowledging that in the FAM timeline the Star Trek Phase II series actually happens and leads up to THE WRATH OF KHAN being the first movie, and by 2003 there's only three Trek series (perhaps TNG being the third).

That said, I think the series has peaked with S2. S3 got a bit silly, especially with the Stevens boys just being the absolute worst. S4 was a step up, but I think it's time to wrap things up with S5 as it gets closer to our present.

[TGLS]

Things don't change much is always a plausible outcome, but who wants to read stories where nothing really changes?

Like Ron Moore acknowledging that in the FAM timeline the Star Trek Phase II series actually happens and leads up to THE WRATH OF KHAN being the first movie, and by 2003 there's only three Trek series (perhaps TNG being the third).

I prefer to think that Poole decided that certain series aren't canon.

[Nobody700]

With season 2 coming up, a season I never saw, it is interesting to now imagine that one girl sets fire to the space shuttle as it goes up, gets everyone killed, and her last thoughts are worth it as she dies in a fireball.

Harsh? Yes. But somehow I see it happening.

[TGLS]

Chuck talked a lot about responding to the Russian claim jumping in episode 3, so I think it's worth talking about why sanctions are dismissed as an option in the show. At the time, most sanctions were on an individual basis: The US embargoes Cuba, and other Western countries don't. The US freezes Iranian assets, other countries still trade with Iran. As we proceed towards the modern day we start seeing multilateral sanction regimes where the whole Western bloc gets together to impose sanctions on a problem nation.

At the same time, in the 80s international trade was far smaller in the 80s. Worldwide, international trade grew over a thousand times compared to the modern day. Even if the Soviet Union were somehow completely isolated from trade, they'd still be not as hurt as nations are today.

On top of this, it helps when the sanctions leave a nation without alternatives. Russia has had no end of problems with inability to secure semiconductors in the wake of the Ukraine war, and even trade with China is hamstrung by Chinese banks fearing retaliation by losing access to SWIFT. The Soviet Union would face minimal impacts, with their own alternative payment systems and semiconductors not becoming as important yet.

There are also alternate history implications too. Nixon started selling grain to the Soviet Union in 1973, and this was cancelled by Carter during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (and brought back by Reagan the following year). In the For All Mankind timeline, Nixon lost the election before this happened, so even less trade between the US and Soviet Union would be affected by the embargo.