/r/MagicalWhatIf
Ask the questions to weird for HistoryWhatIf or FutureWhatIf
Rules and Regulations
Threads should be based mostly in reality with at least one "fantasy" element. Such as "100 US Marines find themselves in the Roman Empire" or "In 2020 Vladimir Putin gains superpowers".
Comments should accept the premise of the thread as true but answer the question realistically. Meaning, don't question how or why 100 Marines were sent back in time. Just give your thoughts on what would happen.
No insults. Keep it civil and don't correct spelling or grammar. Do not encourage trolls.
No low effort posting or commenting. Answers should provide in-depth answers. Not jokes or images and no bots or personal politics.
Use the [Geography] tag to indicate points of divergence based on different landscapes. Use the [DBWI] tag to signify double blind what-ifs. Use the [Challenge] tag for posts where you're asking how something could have happened different rather than what if it happened differently. Use [HWI] for historical based questions and [FWI] for future based questions.
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/r/MagicalWhatIf
Despite being improbable, Pyongyang magically is now sitting on top of an oil field. What changes politically?
What changes if this guy is in the same primary field as Trump with his main platform being against healthy foods based on the fact he's promoting a sugary cereal?
How does he do in the GOP primary, with his only policy being EXTREMELY lax on guns and the right for people to use dynamite?
How would a dog do as president of the United States? (Handwaving the whole age thing.) Think of a male pug for reference and they have to do this job. Their running mate is a regular human(who is a gay woman).
How do zombies change the outcome if stereotypical Romero type zombies are added?? Do they help the North win faster?
For instance, every Miami Dolphins player is literally a dolphin.
Yeah, it is of course in Mandarin for obvious reasons, but he decides to make himself INTO "Little Bear Winnie".
Can Captain Crunch beat Mitt Romney in 2012?? He is a businessman with military service, which are two things going for him.
A Romero-type zombie outbreak starts around 1634 near Prague around the time the French intervene. What changes?
How would the 2024 election go if Trump was running against his 2016 self?
Alf lands in our universe, not the sitcom universe. How does President Reagan and his administration respond finding out that there is a cat-eating alien living in someone's house?
Saddam Hussein becomes a huge fan of Anime and Japanese culture and pop music. He wants to make Iraq "Kawaii" and throws Japanese words into random Arabic sentences. How do his generals respond now that he has posters of Sailor Moon in all of his palaces?
The Second Coming of Jesus occurs during the Crusade that Richard I was on. How do the wars between Christian invaders and the Islamic resistance go?
What happens if, after his first invasion of Ukraine, he is randomly killed by a bear in 2014?? The bear is a magical bear that no Russian security service can protect him from.
As soon as he takes power, Hitler randomly decided to convert to Judaism. Of course, him being Hitler, he calls it something like "Aryan Judaism", and it does not resemble any known form of Judaism(He is trying to appeal to mischling and people of the Association of German National Jews). What happens to him?
The tech though is only at Archer's level, not Kirk's, Picard's, or Burnham's, meaning it is primitive by Trek standards. Does humanity try to build the Terran Empire?
As a punishment for disobeying North Korea's Kim dynasty, a new form of execution has been installed. Kim is now willing to personally eat(as well a serve to his top generals) ethnically Korean political prisoners who live in his gulags. What changes now that he is openly eating his own people?
What changes about her music if she is revealed to be a literal monster that doesn't age???
What does Putin do if he is given a minotaur in a dungeon in Moscow???
What happens if Cuban troops join the Six Day War on the side of the Arabs?? This is magical as they are magically teleported in shortly before the invasion and there are Spanish-Arabic interpreters on site.
MWI: What happens in geopolitics if the two countries swap populations, meaning you have Belarus being near the United States, the Bahamas, Mexico, and Haiti and Cuba bordering Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland(the EU)?
What changes if God kills Satan permanently so that original sin never becomes an issue?
The isle of Sicily during the Athenian brigade is "cursed by the Gods" and they now have a Romero-type zombie problem there.
What changes if this animal can now be domesticated??? The magical event happened in prehistoric times.
Israel's population now has a Christian majority instead of a Jewish one. Jews are now a minority and Israel becomes some kind of Oriental Orthodox Christian. How do politics change with Israel now being Christian?
Starting in 2026: Christmas becomes ONLY moderately commercialized while Easter is now hyper commercialized. How does retail adapt to a hyper commercialized Easter every March or April??
What changes given that a four lane bridge(think I-10 in the Achafalaya basin in Louisiana) but MUCH longer now connects a random city in southern India to Jaffna???
What if, for the 2012 election, he is allowed to run in the GOP primary as a Republican?? Despite being born in Austria and being a naturalized citizen, he is allowed to run in 2012. How does he do in the GOP primary given the "rules change"?
So when I last made this post, I got some pretty debby downer responses. People going on about the unrealism of my question. But I say: this is an alt history. Of course there can be things that are historically incorrect!
Anyway. I wanna know your thoughts on how slavery would look in the year 1970. I don’t care if you song think it would have survived. In the lore I have. Obviously like plantations would have shrunk and no need for hundreds of slaves. However. I wanna know what else I could use slaves for.
Furthermore. What would the life of slaves me in an America that never federally got rid of slavery? See, in this timeline the south never secedes because of the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment makes it constitutionally impossible to ban slavery.
So even if slavery isn’t super common. It’s still legal. Which means at least one or two people still own slaves. So what form would modern slavery take?
And no I’m not a pariah state. The other players who are running various countries have said it’s a “peculiar practice”. However our military strength mixed with trade potential keeps us off the chopping block. We are not a pariah.
So the American I have does not have Texas or the south west. The current year is 1970, and the nation never had a civil war. Why? Because through various compromises in the south’s favor, and the Corwin Amendment being ratified, slavery has continued in some form or another up until the present. Civil rights is now going on for FREEDOM blacks, but some are still enslaved and have no hope of freedom as it’s in the constitution and no one wants to push to unratify it. The south is much more populated along the Mississippi, along the coast, and Georgia is just massive.
So my question is, what do you think modern 1970 slavery in America looks like? Keep in mind the fugitive slave acts are passed, so slaves don’t just become free the moment they go north. Also, Texas is a slave owning country too, and it s allied with the US so like, slaves don’t just cross the southern border in droves.
I’m assuming the whole plantation style system has been aged out with better farm tech and the realization that slavery just is more expensive. However in assuming about 1%-5% still own slaves in slave states.
New Orleans. Memphis, Vicksburg, Atlanta, Nashville, Asheville, Charolette, Raleigh, Charlestown, Jacksonville, and other southern cities are much larger than IRL. Black Codes and Jim Crow laws still apply to freed blacks.
Long story short, what form would slavery manifest today? What would the life of a slave be like?