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Brainstorming Scenarios Scenario Seeds Ideas that may become scenarios By: Dale R. Cozort |
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 It's Been Quiet Around Here
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1) What
if someone like Robert MacNamara had been in charge of the US Defense
Department at the start of World War II?
2) What if the first Shah of Iran had been able to
maneuver
politically well enough to avoid the Anglo-Soviet invasion of August
1941? Historically
he had no idea how seriously
the British and Soviets were contemplating an invasion because his
advisers
were unwilling to pass bad news up the chain of command. The issues that led to the
invasion were
probably resolvable had the Shah known that they were grounds for an
invasion. 3) The Soviets appear
to have been building up for a possible invasion of Iran before the
German
invasion. What if
the Soviets had
invaded Iran in early June 1941? 4) What if the Japanese
had designed and used their subs for commerce-raiding instead of for
attacking
warships? That
would have run contrary
to a lot of national instincts, but it could have made life much more
difficult
for the Allies in the early part of World War II.
Add a Battle of the Pacific, and maybe a Battle of
the Indian
Ocean against Japanese subs to the Battle of the Atlantic and Allied
shipping
and escorts would be stretched very thin.
The Japanese also had the potential for commerce
raiding by surface
vessels to a greater extent than the Germans did. 5) What if somehow
conditions around the Bering Strait kept humans out of the New World
significantly longer than they did?
I
know that's been brought up a time or two before, but I'm visualizing a
very
late entry. Historically
Eskimo/Aleut
technology got good enough at some point that it would have been
difficult to
keep them out. If
developments happened
at the historic pace Eskimos would have eventually gotten across given
most
reasonable sets of conditions. Let's
say the first humans to reach the New World get here approximately 500
BC. They are
specialized Arctic fishermen, seal
hunters, and whalers. How
long does it
take for them to adapt to the various ecologies of the New World? Do
the
megafauna survive? Are
they even still
around when the first humans get here? 6) Here's an odd-ball
thought: What if the early Spanish settlers had brought Barbary Apes (a
kind of
Macaque that lives semi-wild on Gibraltar) to Mexico as pets? Would they have gone feral? Would they have done a
“rabbits in
Australia” act, spreading and becoming pests?
What impact if any would they have on New World
monkeys? How far
north would they be able to spread? Comments are very welcome. Click
here if you want me to
let you know when a new issue of the Newsletter comes out. Copyright
2005 By Dale R. Cozort |