#the cold war
Monday Morning Links!
* Paradoxa 32 has a cover.
* Boys don’t read enough.
* The era of high fertility is ending. Every child on their own trampoline. Police-Free Childhoods. The Seismic Generational Shift in Worldview: Millennials Seek a Nation Without God, Bible and Churches.
* Selfies, Surgeries And Self-Loathing: Inside The Facetune Epidemic.
* The Bullshit Jobs Boom.
* The empty brain. Your brain does not…
Mechanisburg in the 20th Century
This is a world where everything is exactly the same. Except Mechansiburg exists, and it is exactly the same as it is in GG cannon. AKA this heavily armed and very militaristic eastern european city state that was successfully contained sometime in the 1800s, but has never stopped trying to conqure the world.
In fact, this narrative remains more or less unchanged right up until World War II, where german troops invading eastern europe are greeted with “Oh thank god you’re here! Quick, the Heterodynes are breaking out!”
The Nazi high command would have normally dismissed the stories that come back as a bunch of bullshit being spouted by cowards. Except the Heterodynes made sure there was a designated survivor, left alive to spread the tale. Well, left alive is not exactly correct. More like they were brought back to life so that their severed head could tell the tale to Hilter and the Nazi high command.
As a result german forces do not retreat from the Mechanisburg Valley until they are forced out by the Red Army, and then Mechanisburg is Stalin’s problem. The Soveit Union never admits it, but they come close several times to having the Heterodynes break out of the Mechanisburg Valley. Especially when the Heterodyne respond to the Katyusha rocket launchers by building a mobile pipe organ capable of wiping out an entire battallion.
As the Cold War heats up, Mechanisburg finds itself as this small little stain on the Iron Curtain, the one spot in eastern europe that is not communist and has brutally resistened any attempt to make it so. (The Soviet Leadership are too scared to even try dropping a nuke on the town, because sure as hell Mechanisburg already has nuclear defenses anyway.) And despite the fact that Mechanisburg is only the size of a particularly large city state, it is an enthusizastic participant in the arms race.
Yes it may not have the same size nuclear stockpile as the two superpowers, but neither the US or the Soviet Union has a giant death ray pointed at the moon. The rest of the world watching this tiny city state parade this truely bizzare array of weapons, monsters, and historical war loot thinks the people of the Sovereign Nation of Mechanisburg (AKA the Heterodyne Empire) is completely nuts (It is) and is bluffing to try and puff up its ego. (It’s not.) This is not helped by the occasion addresses to the UN, which are basically hour long, winding rants, read off by a member of the Von Mekkhan family with the best poker face.
The Space Race is no better. Yes the Soviet Union may have launched the first satillite, the US may have put the first man on the moon, but Mechanisburg put the first human into orbit. (Granted, the fact that they didn’t survive was the whole point) and they have a big head start toward being the first nation to put a jagermonster on Mars. Nevermind the fact that American astronauts on the moon had a lot of reasons to pray diplomatic relations with Mechanisburg didn’t suddenly dip.
Thankfully by the time the Berlin Wall comes down, a new Heterodyne has taken control of Mechanisburg. Bill and Barry have a different vision for their homeland then their ancestors did, and set out opening a new and friendlier Mechanisburg to the world. This includes things like recognition in the UN, the development of a tourist industry in Mechanisburg, and things like signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (After the definition of “human” is expanded significantly and horrifically.) They also show their good will by dismantling the giant death ray pointed at the moon. (They use the parts from that to build the Great Hospital) As well as cutting back the number of nuclear weapons to only a “couple of the nicer ones,” disbanding the biological weapons team, closing that portal to the hell dimension, disbanding the chemical weapons team, promising to stop arming local bears, disbanding the psychic weapons team, and so on.
Now, how Bill’s daughter, Agatha, found herself being raised by a pair of engine mechanics in Zurich involves a car full of killer wasps, her parent’s best friend being dumped deep into the middle of the amazon jungle, a creepy cult her mom started up, one very very big bomb, and is quite frankly, a story for another time.
