Alternate universe and different trajectory of scientific development

[onlacienega]

I'm trying to work out the details of a story set in an alternate universe that is much like ours, with some subtle and not-so-subtle differences. I'd love to get opinions (and explanations from more tech-savvy folk than I) on whether it would be plausible for humanity to have developed computers (or at least WWII-era technology, since this was the

Comments

[twilight2000]

I think in part it requires changing how your humans look at things - that is, if what they want is the most destructive power, then you lock yourself in a box. If, instead, you posit that "clean energy" is the saving grace - or "Fusion" is discovered *before* "Fission" - or some other motivational or technological branch that simply goes a different direction, then I think you have a good tool to change how your humanity moves forward.

[onlacienega]

Thank you! That makes sense, about the destructive power thing. Unfortunately my universe does desire destructive power...

[twilight2000]

ooh - so that's a good thing - they can be driven to alternate discoveries :>

oh - and I LOVE your icon!

[sethg_prime]

My impression is that one reason the US and USSR kept building more and more powerful nuclear weapons is for the specific purpose of being able to take out one another’s highly reinforced ICBM bunkers.

If, in a nuclear-weapons-free world, the dominant military powers had different strategic goals, they would evolve armaments to match. (For example, drone aircraft have been very much in the news lately, but their effective use in warfare goes back to the 1970s.)

[pax_athena]

I am an astrophysicist, not a nuclear physicist, but I'll try a very subjective answer nevertheless.

1). Yes, I think so. I think one could argument that all the responsible for weapon development thought that nuclear weapons were too long a shot or simply that Einstein did not write his decisive letter or that one of the important scientists died too early in your world or, or, or ... That may delay the actual bombs a decade or so.

I think the answer to the rest of questions is "no", at least as far as "discovered" as in "known the basic principles how to make things work" part goes; the physical principles behind nuclear weaponry are actually pretty simple; so, as a physicist, I would find it hard to suspend my disbelief in a story which has today's computer technology but does imply that people never came up with the principles of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. "Developed" is a different story, I would believe a "people first thought that it's too complex / too dangerous and never came around to try it again".

[tersa]

Nothing to contribute to the question, I just wanted to note your icon is awesome. /sciencelove

[pax_athena]

Awww, thank you! <3

[onlacienega]

I love YOUR icon because I love that BSG scene.

[ap_aelfwine]

I'm not sure this will be any use to you, but I remember a science fictional society,* where the reaction to the concept of a nuclear bomb was something to the effect of "What sort of mindless savage uses an atomic asteroid-mover as a weapon?"

*I'm thinking it was L. Neil Smith's libertarian utopia in The Probability Broach (1980), which had a POD from our timeline with the success of the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s.

[onlacienega]

I'll check it out -- thanks! That's an interesting way to look at it.

[washa_way]

1) Would it be plausible to have WWII-era technology without nuclear weapons?

Well, we had exactly that from September of 1939 until August of 1945.

[onlacienega]

But by then people were beginning to conceptualize and develop nuclear weapons, right? I think the nuclear chain reaction that would lead to the bombs was patented in '34.

[beccastareyes]

Yes. During the 1930s, scientists knew something weird happened when you bombarded heavy isotopes with neutrons, and it took a bit to figure out that they weren't getting heavier elements, but lighter fission products*. In fact, one of the groups working on it -- the one who eventually won the Nobel Prize for discovering fission -- had a major setback when their theorist had to flee Germany in 1938 because she was of Austrian-Jewish ancestry. (She came up with the theory while in exile in Sweden, and her partner back in Germany verified experimentally that, yes, they were getting light elements and more neutrons of the sorts you would expect if uranium atoms were breaking apart in large fragments

[xolo]

It's certainly plausible, I think. Don't forget that producing working fission bombs by 1945 took a prodigious effort, and that until the last few weeks of WWII, there actually weren't any atomic bombs. The bomb was definitely going to be built eventually - various physicists had been poking away at the idea of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction since the early 1930s, even if most of them thought of it as a tamer sort of thing than it actually turned out to be. Had there been some sort of major setback in the Manhattan Project, then I think the war might well have been fought to a conclusion without atomic bombs. They were only a few years down the road at the furthest, but a post-war era without atomic bombs was certainly possible.

[onlacienega]

Thanks! At least I know that if I decide to have the technology at the level of WWII or immediately post, it's plausible that the nukes have yet to be developed.