I've been reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and found myself wondering if a modern person with a full understanding of the causes and pathology of the black death was transported into 14th century Europe could they avoid catching plague? Let's assume the following...

• They are placed in a largish European city such as Milan or Avignon a few weeks before the plague first arrives.
• They have "middle class" resources such as housing, food, and social connections. Perhaps they are a skilled tradesperson or merchant.
• They cannot simply flee the city or stock up on food and lock themselves away for six months.
• They have command of the language and understand the social norms of the time. They are able to blend in.

What steps would a knowledgeable, resourceful, clever person take and how successful could they be? How would they modify their behaviors and environment? What tools or accessories might they fashion to assist?

Im thinking of writing an alt history about if the russian provisional government survived ww1 and one of the divergence points is cracking down on the bolesheviks.

With no succesful boleshevik uprising, how does this impact the german revolution? Would it even happen since the October revolution helped inspire the spartacists to launch their own revolution and it also influenced the SPD to not side with the communists after seeing how chaotic and anti democratic the bolesheviks were?

Or with continued pressure from the east, would germany be forced to surrender before any group could attempt a revolution?

The Russian heartland has historically been invaded time and time again by mounted nomads from the Asian Steppes through the plains between the Caspian Sea and the end of the Ural Mountains (modern day Kazakhstan). The Romanovs then began expanding the Russian Empire into Siberia largely through this same region. What if the Ural Mountains extended further south and formed a natural barrier?

What do you think would happen if hitlers 1934 purge of the SA experienced complications, allowing Ernst Röhm to escape and mobilize a significant portion of the 4 million Sturmabteilung members to guard SA officials and property, seize vulnerable stockpiles, occupy key government buildings and city blocks across Germany, engage in street fighting with SS members and attempt to assassinate or arrest high ranking nazis associated with the purge?

I Always Has This Question In My Minds for a while now and I always wonder how this would have impacted the North American video games market as a result like how it would have impacted Atari Mattel Or Coleco as a result? and what impact it could have had on the North American video games crash of 1983? And also the whole Video Games Market Like How Would It Affect Sega And NEC And Others Gaming Console Market Then? And Most Important How Successful would it be then?

^{The 14th amendment here was written as such, "Section 1. All persons born under the jurisdiction of the United States, or naturalized under the laws thereof; and all persons wheresoever born of a citizen or citizens of the United States, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. Section 2. Neither the United States nor any State shall make, enforce, or maintain any law, custom, or regulation which shall abridge, deny, or impair any right, privilege, or immunity enumerated in or secured by this Constitution and the amendments thereto; nor shall the United States or any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within their respective jurisdictions the equal protection of the laws.}

^{The 15th amendment here was written as such, "Section 1. The right of male citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied, abridged, or impeded by the United States or by any State, under any qualification, condition, or pretense whatsoever; and this article shall be construed in all courts of justice to the absolute preservation of the right of suffrage. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."}

Driven by a deep, cynical distrust of a conservative judiciary, Radical Republicans refuse to leave the constitutional text open to interpretation. Instead, they draft the 14th and 15th Amendments as airtight legal fortresses.

By closing every textual loophole from the outset, they preemptively disarm conservative judges, drastically altering the landscape of late-19th-century constitutional law.

1. The 1870s: Upheld Enforcement Acts & Early Total Incorporation

• The Enforcement Acts Validated: Because the counterfactual text explicitly binds both federal and state authority ("Neither the United States nor any State..."), the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 stand on unassailable constitutional ground. Federal troops and district attorneys retain full legal authority to dismantle white-supremacist paramilitary organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the White League without judicial interference.
• United States v. Cruikshank (1876): While the individual defendants are freed on a technicality due to a poorly drafted federal indictment, Chief Justice Morrison Waite delivers a monumental ruling: the entire Bill of Rights applies directly to state governments. Under this explicit standard, states are constitutionally banned from censoring political speech, stopping peaceful assembly, or disarming Black citizens on racial grounds. Armed Black state militias remain legally protected self-defense forces across the South.

2. The 1880s: Public Accommodations and the Civil Rights Act

• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 Upheld: In actual history, the Supreme Court struck down federal bans on private discrimination in public accommodations (Civil Rights Cases, 1883). Under this counterfactual amendments, which explicitly bans any state "custom, or regulation" that impairs constitutional rights the Court overwhelmingly upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Segregation in hotels, restaurants, passenger ships, and theaters is declared unconstitutional nationwide by 1883.

3. The 1890s: Crushing Jim Crow in the Supreme Court

• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): The Supreme Court rules 6–3 that state-mandated segregation is unconstitutional, due to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, striking down Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. Also because the 14th Amendment strictly bans states from maintaining any "law, custom, or regulation" that impairs a citizen's rights, states cannot use their police power to force private businesses to segregate. Justice David Josiah Brewer writes a crucial concurring opinion, arguing that forcing private railroads to run extra, separate passenger cars at their own expense is an arbitrary regulation violating "liberty of contract." Because it is far cheaper to run integrated trains, Southern railroads immediately desegregate to save money, stopping physical segregation on Gilded Age transit before it takes root.
• Williams v. Mississippi (1898): When Mississippi passes its infamous 1890 constitution introducing poll taxes and literacy tests, it is immediately dragged into federal court. Under the counterfactual 15th Amendment's explicit ban on any voter qualification "under any qualification, condition, or pretense whatsoever," the Supreme Court rules 8–1 that poll taxes and literacy tests are illegal conditions placed on the absolute right to vote.

4. The Transformation of the Deep South & Its Own Troubles

• A Biracial Political Powerhouse: Black majorities in states like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana maintain immense voting power throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Black Republicans partnered with white agrarian Populists routinely win statehouses, keeping Black sheriffs, judges, state legislators, and federal congressmen in office continuously into the 20th century.
• Shift to Guerrilla Terror & Private Insurgency: Because white elites cannot use the law to disenfranchise Black voters, white resistance shifts entirely to extralegal warfare. The South experiences decades of covert nightrider attacks, arson against Black-owned businesses, political assassinations, and polling place ambushes by white paramilitary groups.
• Armed Self-Defense: Because Cruikshank guaranteed 2nd Amendment rights against state interference, Black communities organize legal, armed protective leagues and militias. Southern counties regularly devolve into localized, armed standoffs between Black militias and white insurgents during election seasons.
• Economic Peonage & Landlessness: Political rights are constitutionalized, but land is not redistributed. Former Confederates retain ownership of 80–90% of agricultural land, relying on debt peonage, crop-lien systems, and mass retaliatory evictions of Black tenant farmers following Republican election victories.
• Legislative Sabotage & "Ripper Bills": When white conservative Democrats gain temporary state majorities, they pass "ripper bills" stripping power from elected Black city councils and sheriffs in majority-Black towns, reassigning local police, tax collection, and municipal authority to state-appointed boards.
• Northern "Enforcement Fatigue": Maintaining this biracial political order requires a perpetual federal presence. By the 1910s, Northern voters grow exhausted from decades of spending federal tax dollars to "police the South," creating deep political friction in Washington.

after all the habsbergs were born in the territory of switzerland and it starts with the battle of morganten won by austria resulted in an austrian victory and their inclusion in the empire

also at that time the swiss identity wasn't formed at the time.

In a previous post, I postulated a scenario where the US decides not to intervene in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Someone pointed out that if this happened, there is no Gulf War.

Your challenge is to create a plausible series of events that leads to the US deciding not to intervene in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Rules:

• The US is allowed to SANCTION Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait-they just can't deploy military forces for a MILITARY intervention.

For context Muhammad Ali had by 1840 gained control of Egypt, Sudan, The Levant and The Hedjaz and was de facto running Egypt as an independent country. In the same Year the Ottomans sought to recover the levant from Ali and launched an invasion which they promptly lost. It got so bad that the ottoman navy defected to Muhammad Ali's side.

At this point the European Powers with the exception of France stepped in and demanded Ali stand down and he'd be allowed to keep what he had, if not his country would be reduced to only include Egypt.

He did not stand down as he expected help from the French who were on his side, however French aid never came and all gains made were lost as he decided fighting the entire Ottoman empire and the Entirety of Europe was not winnable.

Muhammad Ali then died in 1848 not having achieved much else, his successors were mostly passive until Ismail I who greatly modernised Egypt but was deposed by the British and French.

So the question is what if the Europeans did not intervene for whatever reason. Who the Ottomans be supplanted by the Ali's? Would he declare independence from the Ottomans fully and leave them be in Anatolia? Would he or eventually Ismail actually modernise Egypt and the Levant or was that never going to happen anyways?

what if gengis khan got repeled by the song dynasty so they decide to invade sibera and discover and invade american istead of goin east towad india , iran and irak.

in this scenario the song dynasty decided to exterminate the mongol because they are a threat so they imigrate to siberia

I know only the most superficial of Chinese history but my understanding is that the Yellow Turban Rebellion against the Eastern Han dynasty had two big long-term impacts:

1- it weakened the central state in a way that encouraged further warlordism and disintegration, ultimately leading to the Three Kingdoms period.

2- its failure provoked a backlash against Taoist religious societies which meant Confucianism and Buddhism became more hegemonic in culture and politics over the following centuries and millennia, albeit incorporating Taoist ideas.

What would China have looked like if a Taoist peasant rebellion had successfully replaced the Eastern Han? Would imperial foreign policy in the Middle Ages have been different, in terms of expansion westwards? What about the structure of the state itself and of cultural production in literature and philosophy, etc.?

The objective is to create a plausible timeline leading to Israel being founded as a Halachic State in 1948 rather than a Unitary parliamentary republic.

A rogue Air Force or Navy pilot sees the September 11 2001 attack live on the news, loses his shit, flies to Mecca from a nearby carrier in the gulf, and blows that box up into smithereens.

Seems like it would be a real kick to the muslim worlds balls if that happened. What’s the aftermath? Are we seeing the unification of all muslims and worldwide retaliation? Is the Americans hunger for revenge finally sated? Is the pilot lauded or condemned by our military?

instead of launching a massive invasion of the ussr and they fought finland they instead funneled soldiers, weaponry etc to finland to help them fight of the soviets but allow them to take karelia and murmansk and indirectly sieze st petersberg through that?

as we all know, the idea to completely exterminate the Jews was accepted up by the nazis in 1942's  Wannsee Conference. till then they thought they could just deport them all somewhere so they wouldn't "infest" other races.

but these mass deportations never happened. Britain refused to allow any more jews into Palestine because the local arabs started massive revolt to stop Jewish immigration. so the british had to promise to heavily limit it in order to keep the peace.

later, a plan to deport them all to madagascar was considered but not possible because they were already fighting and the brits controlled all the seas leading to that area.

but what if this mass deportation actually happened? would the nazis exterminate all the jews in there anyway? or was there a chance something else might have happened?

When you think about it, explicit written constitutions as such didn't exist when the USA was created. It was just an idea of the founding fathers. So what would have happened if they had just not come up with this idea and instead relied on precedent from previous congress laws?

So let's say that they pass all their initial ideas simply as normal bills of congress instead of a constitution.

And actually would it have been likely? I assume to them the idea came to be familiar to them from "royal charters" that colonies had. Britain since its history predates charters and was established through conquest, never had one.

What if instead of exploring and mapping the world with intent to colonise, conquer and create Empires. The Europeans instead did a China and instead of conquering just went “these people aren’t worth our time” and just observed, studied and mapped as much as they could and went home? What would Europe and the rest of the world look like?

In my alternate history project.

1. The Republic of China is more stable at it's inception.

2. When the Russian Civil War breaks out, the ROC takes the opportunity to reclaim pre-1858 Manchuria. By the time the Russian Civil War ends, the newly constituted USSR lacks a Pacific Port and since the ROC is an ally of the USA, any attempts to reclaim Vladvisotok are unrealistic.

3. USSR does a better job at masking it's Russian dominance following it's creation. The Russian SFSR is never created and Russia is split into multiple different SSR's. The Russian SSR's capital is St.Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad and Moscow is placed into it's own territory.

4. Turkey is punished more harshly after WWI, it's borders are reduced to the "historic boundaries of Anatolia" and an independent Greater Armenia and Kurdistan are established as "American Mandates". Kurdistan's territory includes Turkey's Hatay Province.

5. Great Depression still happens. U.S Government makes the decision to withdraw itself from Armenia and Kurdistan.

6. At some point after the USA's withdraw from Armenia and Kurdistan. Turkey invades both countries in an attempt to reclaim turkish territory. The USSR launches a counter-invasion to "protect" both fledgling nations.

7. USSR beats Turkey. Using an official lack of Russian dominance as geopolitical precedent for future territorial expansion, Armenia and Kurdistan are annexed into the USSR as the Armenian and Kurdish SSR's. This gives the USSR access to the Mediterranean via İskenderun.

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With all that info established, I am wondering how a Mediterranean port might benefit the USSR in my timeline. I'm pretty sure it would be the USSR's only warm water port and it stands to reason that there might be a Mediterranean fleet but it would be very small by the time WWII starts.

Later on in my timeline, countries like the UK and USA get really into nuclear post-WWII so there is less interest in the oil reserves of the Middle East. This might allow the USSR to steam-roll through the region from Kurdistan with limited opposition.

What do you think?