10 Alternate Scenarios That Are Actually Dumb

For every scenario with an interesting and plausible twist there are a dozen more that are on the wacky side. Here are 10 of the most popular and often suggested scenarios, that just don't make any sense once you look into them

Chapters

00:00- Intro
02:20- Alexander invades Rome
03:34- Rome industrializes
05:31-Harald Hardrada conquers England
07:38-Ming sails to America
09:07-Sunset invasion
10:53-Trent Affair leads to a Confederate win
13:09- Italy joins Central Powers
15:01-Republicans win in Spain
16:31- Operation Downfall
18:40- Man in the High Castle

[aidangordon]

"What do you mean, China and Russia won't unite to invade America?"

-Every Call of Duty dev ever

[EmperorTigerstar]

Ain'tHappenin'Hub strikes again

[BasicallyBaconSandvichIV]

I have an alt-hist where Rome industrialized, but I literally had to bring in an undead time-traveler with the book "How to invent Everything. A survival guide for the stranded time traveler." to even make that happen.

[LedosKell]

The States-Carthage Entente is, sadly, not a viable competitor to BRICS.

[benbarltrop]

Being totally honest, the scenario where the dual invasions of England result in two separate English kingdoms (with the north being aligned with Norway and the south being aligned with Normandy) sounds more interesting than "England has vikings now".

[SetrinSkyheart]

I did my bachelor's paper on the German bomb and boy howdy the story is even sillier than people realize. On top of what Cody said, we have:
Discounting uranium as a viable atomic energy source.
Insisting that more Neptunium (their alternative) than actually physically existed would be needed to get anything done with atomic energy.
Backtracking everything in the 60s and insisting that they knew all of Einstein's stuff all along and that they were "this close" to completing a functional bomb before the German surrender.

It was wild.

[LadyViscera]

The fact Nazi Germany handicapped themselves by being antisemitic towards nuclear fission never fails to kill me 😂

[oliversherman]

Alternate History Hub: Here's a list of the most unrealistic alternate history scenarios

Wolfenstein:

[agonistadenoche]

Now we need 10 real historical scenarios that would probably be on this video in an alternate timeline in which they were considered too dumb to happen.

[David-bqj]

I read somewhere that the Roman writer Pliny wrote one of the first althistories wondering if Alexander invaded Rome. Being a good Roman, he said he would lose.

[RJKilroy]

The anarchists weren’t even “with” the republicans, they considered themselves a separate faction that was fighting alongside the enemy of their enemy

[rainydaygaming]

So the alternate history I want to see is this: during the US Civil War the king of Siam offered Lincoln a bunch of war elephants for the campaign. I want the movie mostly historically accurate until like Antietam, and then suddenly Elephants.

[TheWhiteDragon]

The whole "Rome industrializing" thing really ticks me off every time I see it, because it took a mega-uber-nerd named Whitworth to finally establish the principles of close-tolerance-manufacturing needed to properly ramp up production, and even then it was the final hurdle in centuries of iterative changes in manufacturing techniques. Everything before then, even close-tolerance machining for complex machines like clocks and steam engines were each bespoke projects hand-fitted to purpose and incredibly precious and irreplacable (at least not exactly 1-to-1 replacable).

[th_Law]

Hardrada conquering England, to my understanding, is more typically justified by Godwinson fighting William first, winning, then getting defeated by Hardrada

[alang.bandala]

Fun fact: The Germans DID try to make a nuclear bomb, but when the Allies invaded the facilities they found that it looked more like a garage than an industrial laboratory. When the war ended, they put all the German scientists in a house with hidden microphones and played radios that gave the news of the bombings in Iroshima and Nagasaki, to which one of the Germans responded: "How did the Americans get 200 tons of plutonium just for one bomb?" It's not just that they weren't interested, it's that when they tried it they didn't even know how to make one.

[helloimskip]

To be good at Alternate History is to be great at History in the first place. So many new people creating alternate history "scenarios" who have little knowledge of history makes the wildest and most out-of-character events ever.

[matteomellozzini]

As an Italian, trust me, you would have more luck convincing a fish to fly than us to join Austria in WW1

[charliesmith]

Your analysis of the Ming Dynasty trip to the West Coast is spot-on. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, about 200 A.D., a group of Buddhist monks sailed north around what is now Russia and followed the Aleutian Islands to the North American mainland and south along the coast to Monterey Bay in what is now California. They drew detailed maps, contacted the natives, found nothing of interest, and sailed back the same way.

[TetsuShima]

*Fun fact:* Speaking of Alexander, there's a cancelled a tv show in which the macedonian was played by William Shatner. Only the pilot was made and can be found on Youtube. It's pure 60's style

[thomaspunt]

I've heard this guy talk about Roland Emmerich movies so much it's weird hearing him actually talk about alternate history.