Alternate Histories: The End of the World as We Know It

On September 26, 1983, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet army saved the world.

When the Oko nuclear-warning system erroneously reported an incoming barrage of American missiles, Stanislov Petrov chose not to alert his superiors, and averted the apocalypse. But what if he had made a different decision? Would civilization still exist? What would the world look like today? 

Join the boys as they examine the uniquely human obsession with revising history, and take a journey down the "what if" rabbit hole.

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In this episode:  

• The Roman Origins of Alternate History
• Titus Livius's Ab Urbe Condita
• Points of Divergence
• Chaos Theory
• The Butterfly Effect
• Edward Norton Lorenz
• "For Want of a Nail" 
• Apocalyptic Futures
• Lieutenant Colonel Stanislov Petrov
• The Oko Warning System
• "Launch on Warning" Protocol
• Mutually Assured Destruction
• Northern Hemisphere Effects vs. Southern
• Fallout
• Little Ice Age vs. Nuclear Winter 
• What if the North Hadn't Won the Civil War?
• Likelihood of a Northern Failure/Southern Stalemate
• Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1864
• McClellan Negotiates a Ceasefire
• Lincoln's Legacy
• Slavery Continues
• Southern Decline
• Westward Expansion, Further Fragmentation
• WWI in America

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Episode Transcript