So, let me guess: the premise that the Mediterranean Crisis of 1973 escalates into WWIII is unrealistic, hmmmmm?

:(

Well, this is too quiet.

I wouldn't call it unrealistic.

Then what would you call it?

If I were going to do that as alternate history. I'd have Nixon finding out about the negotiations with the Kremlin, seeing it as his big chance to save his presidency by winning a Cuban-Missile Crisis-style standoff, and then have the Soviets decide (based on what happened before) they can't afford to back down this time.

Oh.

That makes sense.

I'm not entirely sure even Nixon would be that crass, but everyone is so used to him being cast as the bad guy, I'm pretty sure you could get away with it.

Meh. Not sure about that one.

But fair enough.

Also, another thing.

Did the Soviet Union back in 1973 have any EPWs capable of blowing NORAD to pieces?

Don't know that one off the top of my head. However, I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's hearing how we both had all the nukes required to destroy the other side X times over, so I'd be really surprised to hear they couldn't.

Oh.

As for the outbreak of World War III.......well, I had an idea.

Remember what you said about that standoff?

That is pretty much what happens after the first incident, before the US decides to deploy the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Egypt, along with a contingent of US Marines. The Soviets waste no time in doing the same, while the US goes to DEFCON 2.

Of course, last ditch attempts at peace grind to a halt in the Stockholm Conference and after war erupts in Europe, DEFCON 1 is declared, following by the start of Operation: REFORGER.

A conventional war erupted which (technically) began on the 26th of October of 1973 following the first incident, but officially began on the 5th of November of 1973, when the Warsaw Pact began to invade Norway and officially declared war on NATO.

The result? Well, WWIII in Europe, Korea and the Middle East, which culminates in a tactical nuclear exchange in Germany as the Soviets approach the Rhine River, followed by a global thermonuclear war the next day.

In the early 80's used to own a computer wargame that allowed you to play out WWIII as either side. It was a 3-phase game, where the first phase was a war between Iran and Iraq. It was written before the Iran-Iraq war broke out.

I'm not saying when the I-I war broke out I was any more worried than normal though. That was just the kind of world we lived in back then.

While my first instinct is to wonder what about Norway would the Warsaw Pact even care about enough to invade, SSI actually had a classic computer wargame covering that exact scenario.

So......is it available for download?

Without an Apple II or C64, a download wouldn't do you a lot of good. :-)

Well, any emulators for that, then?

I'd be shocked if there weren't C64 emulators floating around the interwebs.

I meant any you could recommend.

Neither were my platform (although I spent a lot of time bogarting game time on both). My path was TRS-80 -> Atari 800 -> Amiga -> PC. The Amiga is the only one I ever looked back on. Still have all my Amiga games in a closet at home.

So........I am on the main menu.

What are the controls?

Oh.

Found them.

Well, on the bright side, I still want to know how many Americans would be stranded in Europe following the global thermonuclear war phase of the conflict.

Oh and Canadians.

:P

I'm shocked there'd be any alive anywhere, outside of perhaps Antarctica.

Well, the Southern Hemisphere would be (mostly) fine.

Nothing to nuke there, so logically anything south of the equator should be fine.

400 million die North of the equator, but 1.2 billion are killed in the aftermath, most from the collapse of most pre-War nations.

Especially artificial African borders.

Fortunately for humanity, 2.3 billion humans have survived.

So, the new post-War superpowers are: the Commonwealth of Oceania (led by New Zealand, since parts of Australia were nuked and Australia is the only nation south of the equator to be nuked at all, mainly targeting naval bases in the area), the Association of South American Nations (led by Brazil), and the South African Union (led by......you guessed it: South Africa).

And South Africa is the only pre-War nation in Africa to survive mostly intact.

So, I am still wondering how many American troops post-War would be stranded in Europe.

Interesting. Most of my thinking on the matter had always been predicated on the idea that I personally was highly unlikely to survive. So everything after that is in IDGAF-land.

I don't think I'm alone in that. Just about everyone I ever met had some story about why where they lived would be "one of the first places to go".

I'd always thought the world afterwards would be essentially uninhabitable. So if you live through the initial strikes, most likely you'd die of radiation, starvation, suffocation, etc.

@FutureHistorian I take it that you're not familiar with the Simonstown Naval agreements?

Important to mention, that it only takes a few dozen nukes to kill the worldwide bird population. And supposedly without birds, the insects will eat everything. So South America or Oceania wouldn't be that nice either.

books.google.com/…

@sempaiscuba? Still not there yet.

Why?

And..........I just realised something.

@sempaiscuba? You do realise that by the time this war happens, the naval agreement is still two years away from being broken, correct?

In 1973 both Royal Navy and US Navy ships were using the naval facilities at Simonstown (and Durban) as de facto NATO bases in the south Atlantic (and Indian) ocean.

I've no doubt the Kremlin had noticed that as well. ;-)

Tthe Simon’s Town Agreement

Hey.

I've been helping out with a project, analyzing some data for some speed records for different vehicles.

I noticed an oddity on the train records stats, though.

There are no new records between 1854 and 1934.

I was wondering if asking why this may have happened would be appropriate to ask on History.SE.

@Mithrandir Sounds like a historiography question to me. However, questions I think are fine quite often get closed.

I'd be tempted to think that perhaps train tech didn't advance much for that 80 years, but the speed jump in the record looks anomalous too.

Well, this may end well..........

@FutureHistorian ?

What?

I just find it convenient that you showed up.

:D

...o_o

What?

Is that a problem?

@FutureHistorian just sounds slightly ominous tbh

Oh.

Sorry.

:(

@T.E.D. so I might as well give it a shot

@T.E.D. any advise on tagging?

I'm just going with records for now.

asked - Why were there no increases in the train speed records between 1854-1934?

@Mithrandir There's a historiography tag that might be appropriate.

@Mithrandir (Protip: put the link on a line by itself, and the chat software will expand it a bit)

@T.E.D. (I know, but I have a userscript that changes the link into a []() link for easier linking in SE posts/comments)

@T.E.D. hm, reading the excerpt, I'm not sure if that's the right tag but if you think so....

I added a nice graph to the question ;)

(I was the behind the scenes person who assembled the data and formatted it (like converting the times to meters/sec), you won't find me credited anywhere if you follow the link back to the program used to generate the graph)

@Mithrandir You may be right. I'm thinking you're asking about not the history itself, but an oddity about how it is currently recorded.

Well, actually, I think that depends on what the answer is.

If the answer is that the data is incomplete, it's about the recording of history. If the data isn't incomplete, then it isn't about the recording.

@Mithrandir Lol. Good point.

BTW, 4 upvotes so far. Nice. I think our users really really like graphs.

Heh. :)

Pictures are always good :D

OOC, what are you using to plot a curve on those points? My last math courses were in the 80's, and I don't remember people doing things like that back then.

@Mithrandir Yeah, I find sticking an ngram in an appropriate answer is like the tac-nuke of answer edits.

@T.E.D. there's a link on the image

Nice. I really wish the SE software would somehow make a visual indication when an image is embedded in a link. Perhaps it does but my browser can't see it.

It does not, as far as I am aware.