Non-Nuclear

[merovingian_backup]

The Russian government just built and tested the biggest bomb ever.

It is very weird that this is not front page news. Or in mainstream American news at all.

I spoke with my parallel history twin, and he says that in his timeline, everyone is in fallout shelters now because of this. Of course, he's also got a terrible, terrible haircut and seems to think it's the best thing ever. And don't even get me started about the zeppelins. Why does every parallel timeline have so many zeppelins?

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

What stopped the zeppelin explosion - er, poor choice of words. The reason there aren't so many zeppelins in our timeline is because of the Hindenberg disaster, which was a statistical fluke of such vanishingly small likelihood that in the majority of even marginally similar timelines, it never happened.

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

Airplanes are faster, boats are cheaper - Luxury travel has always been a niche market, as far as I can tell.

As far as airship fires being a statistical fluke... IIRC, something like 1/4 of the LZ's went up in flames: Accidents, tracer round fire during WWI, etc, etc. Barring the war controls letting the germans have sufficient helium, it had to happen sooner or later. The thing that made the Hindenburg memorable was it's burning to a crisp right in front of a squad of news reporters and radio announcers - Talk about your bad PR.

Not that the Shennendoah, the Akron, the Macon or any of the others helped.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

You seem to be operating from some paralell reality where hydrogen burns like crazy.