The Official Insane What If Thread

[aronnax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais
This one


What I meant was if in 1588, instead of turning west at Calais into the English Channel, they went East into the North Sea, letting the Spanish to land in England

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

However, Jesus would not have been crucified, taking the center of Christianity without his crucifixion. They might have possibly accepted him as a leader, but as a messiah? The Jews were expecting a military leader to defeat the romans, not a religious messiah... another question is, would Jesus have wanted to be the leader of Judea? If not...

I guess we'd all be Muslims then, and Jesus would just be one of our greatest prophets, instead of The Messiah. Assuming, of course, that God didn't find another way for him to be martyred, which is of course possible.

^wait... what Calais are you talking about?

I would imagine the city occupying the Pont de Calais, in France.

 

[cybrxkhan]

What I meant was if in 1588, instead of turning west at Calais into the English Channel, they went East into the North Sea, letting the Spanish to land in England

oh, then i'd... hmm, ack, maybe i woulod be wiped out in an apocalyptic struggle between Modern Spanish Conquestadores wielding bazookas and laser guns and rebel Chinese/Vietnamese/Japanese/Koreans/Etc. with rocket launchers and machine guns.

 

[Damnyankee]

I guess we'd all be Muslims then, and Jesus would just be one of our greatest prophets, instead of The Messiah. Assuming, of course, that God didn't find another way for him to be martyred, which is of course possible.

I'm speaking from a secular position, so we agree to disagree on the whole "God would find another way to kill his son" shtick. Anyway... interesting point on Islam, though Islam would be changed, because Jesus is an important figure in Islam.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I'm speaking from a secular position, so we agree to disagree on the whole "God would find another way to kill his son" shtick. Anyway... interesting point on Islam, though Islam would be changed, because Jesus is an important figure in Islam.

Okay, from a purely secular position, if Jesus was never martyred, then he would be one of the prophets of Islam, pretty much as he is now. We'd remeber him as we do David or Solomon, as a great leader of Israel and messenger of God, there'd probably a picture of him on the qibla wall, lol.

 

[Tee Kay]

What if John III Sobieski fell of his horse broke his leg and bled to death in the summer of 1683?

Nothing much. Vienna would be captured by the Ottomans, but then the Ottoman Empire would've grown too large to be governed properly (and considering that they have weak sultans at this time) and they would've been beaten back.

What if Hitler said "I don't feel like invading Russia"

Hitler would've not invaded England, but instead he might've chosen to concentrate on the North Africa front. Rommel might've well gotten to the Suez Canal. The Middle East might've belong to Nazis or regimes symphathetic to Germans (eg Rashid Ali's Iraq). The route to India would've also been cut. Japan might've chosen to invade India, now isolated, which would've united against the invaders (the British elite would've to reconcile with the locals, and Hindus and Muslims would've put their differences aside. A sense of Indian nationality might developed, and partition may not have occurred). If Germany have chosen then to invade the Soviet Union, then it will be able to invade it from three fronts - Central Asia, Caucasus, Eastern Europe (if not four, since Japan might well have chosen to invade from Manchuria). The USSR would be in big trouble - probably not conquered, since its so large, but could well have been beaten to submission.

 

[manlyboy]

What if Frederick Barbarossa had been wearing a snorkel and floaties when crossing the Saleph River?

 

[aronnax]

What if Frederick Barbarossa had been wearing a snorkel and floaties when crossing the Saleph River?

He will stab Richard instead of leaving Acre?

 

[Volum]

WHAT IF Hitler instead of killing 6 million jews gave them each a rifle and said:

"Here, lets go east together!"

 

[Plotinus]

Christianity didn't exist until after the death of Jesus in 33ad, before that, it was technically a sect.

Jesus probably died in AD 30, although the only real certainty is that it was between AD 26 and AD 36 (when Pilate was around).

If Rome had been destroyed in the time of Augustus, then there would have been no Jewish revolt in the 60s and the Temple would not have been destroyed in AD 70. Judaism would have evolved in a completely different way from how it did and Christianity would probably never have existed - or, if it did exist, it would also do so in a very different way, perhaps remaining within Judaism.

However, Jesus by bloodline had a claim to the throne of Israel.

That's just later myth-making. No-one in Jesus' day could possibly have had any verifiable claim to be a descendant of King David, a figure of semi-legend who lived over a thousand years earlier. As far as I know, is there any reason to suppose that Jesus or anyone in his lifetime even made such a claim. When the later Gospel writers and others made this claim, it was simply part of their wider theological claim about who Jesus was and where he fitted into God's plan. Making Jesus a descendant of David says something significant about him and about his relationship to God, just as drawing parallels with Moses (as Matthew also does - eg the story of the massacre of the innocents and the flight to Egypt) says something else significant too.

Remember, the Jews who "killed" Jesus did so just as much out of fear of the Romans' response to a "rightful" king of Israel (Herod was pretty much installed by the Romans, he was not of the family of David, as Jesus was), so if they didn't have the wrath of their Roman occupiers to fear, the Jewish community might have better accepted Jesus as a leader, assuming Herod didn't track him down before then.

The Jews didn't kill Jesus, the Romans did, and they did so because he was a trouble-maker during the very volatile period of Passover. As I said, there's no reason to suppose that Jesus was really "of the house of David", at least no more than anyone else - it's like someone today claiming to be "of the house of Charlemagne"!

Also, the Romans weren't "occupiers" of Israel. There were only about 3,000 troops in the entire country and they spent almost all their time in Neocaesarea, on the coast. In the time of Jesus the place was run by the tetrarchs or, in the case of Jerusalem, the high priest.

The Herodians did suffer from some unpopularity in virtue of not being quite properly Jewish, at least in the eyes of some of their subjects, but I think on the whole this was low-level muttering rather than the cause of serious discontent - rather like people complaining that Gordon Brown is Scottish. Like most politicians, the Herodians were generally judged on the basis of their actions, not their background. Thus, for example, Antipas ruled more or less OK and enjoyed the relative approval of his people, while Archelaus proved to be very bad and had to be replaced. So I don't see any reason why the people might have particularly wanted to chuck the Herodians out in favour of any supposed descendant of David.

 

[mythmonster2]

What if Columbus had a mutiny the day before reaching America?

What if Israel had lost the 6 Day War?

What if the Muslims weren't turned back at that battle in France (forgot the name!)

What if France not only repelled England, but they conquered it during the 100 Years war?

What if George Washington was shot in the head during the crossing of the Delaware?

What if the Mongols had successfully conquered Japan?

What if America sided with the Axis during WWII?

 

[Trafalgar]

What if Winston Churchill had died in that 1931 New York traffic accident?

The loss of one man could have been a disaster on a world scale.

 

[Ajidica]

At Mythmonster
The battle name is either Tours or Poiters, although Tours is the more common name because Poiters is a major battle in the Hundred Years War. It is highly probable that if the Muslims won, the fledgling Carolingian Empire would have broken apart, but the Moors would not have pressed on ward because there army was roughly 75% cavalry, so it was a raiding expedition. Although since there would be not any European force strong enough to hold the muslims back, eventualy europe would be muslim. Also, no Charlemagne, no France, no HRE.
Heres a question, if Basil II Bulgaroctonos (Bulgar Slayer) had left a legit successor, and the throne had not passed to his drunken and near insane half-brother ALexander, how would Byzantine History be different?

 

[chad187]

What if America had lost the revolutionary war

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

WHAT IF Hitler instead of killing 6 million jews gave them each a rifle and said:

"Here, lets go east together!"

An awful lot of the Jewish (and other) victims of the Holocaust were actually taken from the territories captured in the east.

 

[Evie]

What if Medina Sidonia's ship had been the only ship lost at sea prior to the Armada reachin England?

What if France had conquered the English colonies in North America?

 

[cybrxkhan]

What if... Abraham (the one from Judaism) got killed by some random plague at the age of two?

What if... Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty died in an accident early in her life, and thus more open-minded Qing officials were able to reform China sucessfully enough that it won the First Sino-Japanese War?

What if... the last Mayan city, Tayasal, never fell to the Spanish in 1697, but instead even survived as a modern political entity that is a powerhouse in Central America, controlling the Panama Canal and oil fields (that are supposed to be Venezuela's)?

What if... Catherine the Great's husband, Tsar Peter, was not an ugly, incapable idiot, but a loving, nice guy and a capable statesman? (well, for one thing, Catherine may not even be a playable leader in Civ4!)

 

[EconomistBR]

What if a 20 megaton Nuclear bomb had been dropped in Rome in A.D.200?

 

[Damnyankee]

That's just later myth-making. No-one in Jesus' day could possibly have had any verifiable claim to be a descendant of King David, a figure of semi-legend who lived over a thousand years earlier. As far as I know, is there any reason to suppose that Jesus or anyone in his lifetime even made such a claim. When the later Gospel writers and others made this claim, it was simply part of their wider theological claim about who Jesus was and where he fitted into God's plan. Making Jesus a descendant of David says something significant about him and about his relationship to God, just as drawing parallels with Moses (as Matthew also does - eg the story of the massacre of the innocents and the flight to Egypt) says something else significant too.

You see, I think the same thing, but Jesus was a very charismatic figure, If he had still emerged, and if he still acted like a messiah figure, it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination for him to be crowned "King of Judea" or even "King of the Jews". It also wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination for him to have a claim at least in the minds of the Jews to the throne of David.

 

[mythmonster2]

What if it was, for some reason, a French terrorist who shot Archduke Fernidard?

What if the dinosaurs weren't wiped out?

What if Gandhi was executed by the British?

What if the Confederates beat the North, conquered Canada as well as the rest of the Western Hemisphere?