[FT]USA in Full Thrust...

I have put my "American Time Line" on Thomas Anderson's FTP site.

Here is the URL:  http://members.xoom.com/gzg_l/usa/

The file is called: USATL.ASC. It is an ascii file.

This file is my take on the United States. (They secretly build starships, and
leave the solar system in 2053. They later return in 2188.)

Any comments are welcome!

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

> I have put my "American Time Line" on Thomas Anderson's FTP site.

Well, it's interesting. A lot of work went into it, I'm sure. It's your
universe there, so you can do anything you like...

You lay out half a dozen options for the 'American'-NAC conflict after
the
'Americans' re-emerge from deepest space. I think you left out option
'C',
however:

'Americans' pop their fifty ships out of Jump, and begin to make outrageous
demands of the NAC. NAC Battlegroups deploy with NSL and UN support, and order
the 'Americans' to act civilized. Failing that, they get trashed. Fast scout
squadrons fan out, from many powers, all concerned about these unbalanced,
unknown humans.

The NAC has several billion people, by the most conservative rekoning of
listmembers. Naval lists have been estimated at 2000+ ships by some
listmembers. It's going to take more than a deepspace colony with a bad
attitude to do in the NAC.

Most likely, is that some sort of alliance is worked out, if the 'Americans'
can be made to see reason. Trash the Kra'vak, then sort out
human-vs-human problems...

One good thing about a group as isolated as these 'American's: really
different naval design philosophy! Isolated from the whole mainstream for
ages - a good excuse to try out some _really_ different designs, in
quantities!

> Brian Burger wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

Sometimes it gets difficult to stop adding on..     :-)

> You lay out half a dozen options for the 'American'-NAC conflict after

> 'Americans' pop their fifty ships out of Jump, and begin to make

Opps!  Missed one!   Good idea though.	In spite of what I think,
(Flatten the NAC! Revenge! But, there are probably two things against that:
One it has been 135 years...who could keep a grudge that long? And second, as
I pointed out, the Kra'Vak are coming in like gang busters...The Nac, ect will
have their hands full.) It would make for an interesting number of battles...

> The NAC has several billion people, by the most conservative rekoning

Well, I have yet to estimate the final population size/number of
colonies, ect. I have desided that there shouldn't be more than twenty or
thirty worlds, and time limits the population size...

> Most likely, is that some sort of alliance is worked out, if the

Yes, my first probability. It seems unlikely that the NAC would say no, or the
Americans to be that angry after all those years...

> One good thing about a group as isolated as these 'American's : really

One of the reasons I dreamed them up!  8-D

 This way, I could bend the daylights out of FT/FB1!  (Within limits, of
course...wouldn't want to be a munchkin...I plan to have the Americans
advanced in some ways, and limited in others.)

> Brian (burger00@camosun.bc.ca) -DS2/SG2/FR!/HOTT-

Earth History is a hobby of mine, and Future Timelines are one of my favorite
things... I had to throw in the possibility of the Americans wanting war,
because it is a possibility...albeit a small one.

Thanks for the comments!

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

> Brian Burger wrote:

Tell me about it...that damned website of mine has more bits and pieces to
keep track of every time I turn around...never mind timelines!

> > You lay out half a dozen options for the 'American'-NAC conflict

Really, really strange people? Maybe these deepspace 'Americans' have twisted
patriotism into some sort of fundamentalist religion? The thought occured to
me as I was reading your timeline...esp. with the Catholic
Church involved somehow - maybe some sort of strange fusion of
Catholicism
and patriotism has evolved? With a healthy dose of government-sponsered
zenophobia thrown in. (the Non-Contact laws...)

> And second, as I pointed

What about 'American' vs Kra'vak battles? Maybe have the Kra'vak beating
up on the 'Americans', who decide to lift their age-old ban on contact
to see about getting some help?

> > The NAC has several billion people, by the most conservative

Majorly...I was unpleasantly shocked when I ran population figures through the
various formulas provided by listmembers. The population of my NAC colony
suddenly fell by about 60%! (My initial SWAG pop. figures had been more
Wildassed Guess than Scientific...)

I've still got those population formulas around, if you want them.

> > Most likely, is that some sort of alliance is worked out, if the

I can't see the NAC agreeing to give up territory on Terra, though. They
didn't conquer it, they have a fairly solid claim to be the successor to a
legit American govt - plus they've been in control of the whole ex-US
for
140 years or something like that. 9/10ths of the law...

Help, new allies, the NAC will probably accept. The deepspace Yank's are going
to have to get used to the idea of the Duke of Memphis, Tenn., however! (The
citizens of Memphis, Tenn. probably are!)

> > One good thing about a group as isolated as these 'American's :
really
> > different naval design philosophy! Isolated from the whole

Bend it 'til it creaks...I doubt it'll break entirely, but you might get some
strange results. (Speaking from DS2 vehicle designing here, having explored
the outer limits of Dirtside design with some damned silly
vehicles...Ogres, mostly...thus re-proving the maxim about "The bigger
they are, the harder they fall")

> Earth History is a hobby of mine, and Future Timelines are one of my

Earth history's all we've got, here and now...:) Except for Alternate
History stuff, but that's Earth too, and off-topic.

> Donald Hosford wrote:

Hm. Strange file format - or, rather, the file wants to be opened by
ALIFE.EXE (which it claims is "required to read this type of.ASC
files", which is obviously wrong since Wordpad works just as well :-/ )

> This file is my take on the United States. (They secretly build

Well...

The comment about "I can't see how the NAC would say no" to ceding the USA
is... strange, to say the least.

Put it like this: How would the current US government react if, during
WWII, all of a sudden the (well-armed and numerous) descendants of
Sitting Bull turned up out of nowhere and demanded that all the Plains states
be immediately turned over to them, or else...? The situation is a very close
analogue to your storyline.

Regards,

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> Donald Hosford wrote:

Sorry that I can't help you there...does the ALIFE.EXE program have a way to
tell it not to do that? (ie: tell it to stop monitoring for that file format?)

> > This file is my take on the United States. (They secretly build

Well I did say that it seemed unlikely that the Americans would remain that
mad for 135 years...They would probably work out some kind of economic trade
deal, and leave it at that.

Besides, the various earth nations have been fighting the Kra'Vak for the
last 4-5 years, and they are slowly losing ground....

> Brian Burger wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

> > Sometimes it gets difficult to stop adding on.. :-)

Oy!

> > Opps! Missed one! Good idea though. In spite of what I think,
One it has
> > been 135 years...who could keep a grudge that long?

Another good idea! (And I thought I was the only crazy one here...)

> What about 'American' vs Kra'vak battles? Maybe have the Kra'vak

Very, very interesting. One of the thoughts I had was that the Kra'Vak were
working
WITH the Americans.  In "good cop/bad cop" arraingement, aimed at
conquring all of human space. (I laughed, and said naaa....you know...there
are possibilities
here...)

> Majorly...I was unpleasantly shocked when I ran population figures

I have been using a simple program I wrote up on my laptop. I have been
thinking of expanding it to handle the growth of all of the colonies and the
home world at once...should be interesting.

> I can't see the NAC agreeing to give up territory on Terra, though.
They
> didn't conquer it, they have a fairly solid claim to be the successor

I have been thinking this also.

> Help, new allies, the NAC will probably accept. The deepspace Yank's

Considering the antics of our current government, it makes me think that
peaple can get used to anything.

> > One of the reasons I dreamed them up! 8-D

In my own experience with ogres, the bigger they were, the harder they were to
kill...Those things could eat "a lot" of tanks...

> > Earth History is a hobby of mine, and Future Timelines are one of my

Yep.

> [quoted text omitted]

> Donald Hosford wrote:

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

I know I am commenting to myself again....

Well boys and girls, it occurs to me that this is a space combat game. All
space combat games thrive on conflict. That means wars, ect. If you had a game
where everyone had a nice day, no one was hurt or even dirty
words....It
would make for an extreamly boaring space combat game. Therefore if someone
wants to game out the americans coming back to attack the NAC (win or lose),
let'em.

If you look to real history, it is filled with some of the most unbelievable
reasons peaple started wars.

So it stands to reason that the americans could attack the NAC....Thats why I
listed that possibility.

----------
> Från: Donald Hosford <hosford.donald@acd.net>

> Well I did say that it seemed unlikely that the Americans would

*That* part I don't have any problem with at all - not when the purpose
of the original exodus was to come back and get even. I wouldn't be the
least surprised if the neo-American children were imprinted with that
purpose at a very early age, much like you are taught to honour the US
flag now... National myths and hatreds can be very long-lived indeed,
and not only in the Balkans...

The part in the neo-American timeline about "traitors getting what they
deserve" (not verbatim), concerning those mainland Americans who
cooperated with the UK/Canadian forces, sounds quite a lot like Serb
slogans (or the propaganda/threats of any other totalitarian state or
terrorist organisation of your choice) and (in my eyes) reinforces the
impression of the neo-Americans as being rather fanatic (and capable of
coming up with an ultimatum like that).

> Besides, the various earth nations have been fighting the Kra'Vak for

Compare this to a Neo-Indian ultimatum some time between Pearl Harbour
and Midway. Not that big a difference in the overall situation, except that
the KV are still only on the fringes whereas the Nazis had overrun most of
Europe (corresponding to a large portion of the Core Worlds in the
Tuffleyverse). Which situation is worse?

The NAC also have the British tradition of not losing wars no matter the odds.
Napoleon and Hitler both conquered most of Europe, but in
both cases Britain hung on and emerged victorious - with help from
others, certainly, but the NAC isn't completely without allies either. In
recent years Britain went to war (and a rather expensive war, at that) to
reconquer a few small islands which had been invaded (economic value virtually
nil, political value not much bigger, symbolic value huge...). With a mindset
like that, it is very unlikely that they'd fold up easily.

So, if the neo-Americans made the ultimatum and didn't back down from
it, there'd certainly be war. The biggest question is what the Americans still
living on the North American continent would think
about it all :-/

Regards,

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

> Revenge! But, there are probably two things against that: One it has

umm... off the top of my head: english vs french, arabs vs jews (try a few
millenia there), everyone in the balkans vs everyone else in the balkans.

Tom

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Brian Burger wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:
They
> didn't conquer it, they have a fairly solid claim to be the successor

maybe the Americans-in-Spaaace could invade Airstrip One, aka the
british isles. after all, we all know that modern americans are really british
(the war of independence was, after all, won by british people against the
armies of a german king), and modern brits really american (fathered by GIs
during ww2 and raised on a diet of imported american media and junk food).
thus, what could be more natural than the americans reclaiming their rightful
home (britain), leaving the british in posession of america?

Tom

> At 12:01 AM -0700 4/15/99, Donald Hosford wrote:

> Opps! Missed one! Good idea though. In spite of what I think,

I can nominate a population that can hold a grudge for a century: people. Just
look at the killing zone that used to be Yugoslavia

> At 11:44 AM -0700 4/15/99, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

Distributing.exe files is a good way to get the attention of system
administrators since they set off virus warnings. Zipping the files is a good
first step to getting an attachment through.