The Curie Bomb
From Alternative History
In 1915, a German phosgene gas shell strayed from its target and hit a small village in France where Marie Curie's daughters were visiting a sick friend and were killed. Grief-stricken and seeking revenge, Curie proposed to the French government the idea of a dirty bomb to seed the enemy with radioactive material. A secret project began and two years later, several dirty bombs were dropped behind the Hindenburg Line in Northern France, killing thousands of Soldiers with deadly amounts of radiation.
The German army, decimated by the attack and already suffering heavy economic losses, are forced to surrender.
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[edit] The Post-War Environment
After the war, the world was a very different place. Due to the radiation from the bombs, a large, formerly fertile swath of Central Europe was useless and dangerous. The depression resulting from the economic losses caused by the bombs was a driving force in increased emigration, both East and West, depopulating Europe.
This mass emigration brought the French atomic scientists to the new economic superpowers of the United States, the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan as they engaged in an arms race. The British Empire, meanwhile, developed their own atomic program for internal matters.
[edit] The United States After the War
The United States left the war relatively unscathed and began the economic boom of the 1920s. The fear of possible enemies of the U.S. developing their own dirty bombs drives America into its own weapons program, luring now-impoverished European physicists to American labs with promises of lucrative salaries and lives better than they could possibly have in the Old World.
This new atomic fear fueled the paranoia which was already running rampant in the United States as nationalism grew and fascist politicians gained support. By the time the U.S. detonated its first true atomic weapon in 1932, the Fascist Party had control of all three branches of the government and the extremely popular and charismatic Charles Lindbergh was elected president-for-life.
The increased military spending in the U.S. saved the economy from the dust bowl years when aid to drought-stricken states was made possible through relief efforts made by new Atomic Millionares who had close ties to the Fascist Party and helped bring it into power by financing campaigns in the affected states.
The United States took slightly longer than the U.S.S.R. to develop their atomic weapons, however with the work of Robert Goddard assisted by the Peruvian Engineer Pedro Paulet and German expatriate Hermann Oberth ensured that they were the first to develop both the ICBM (in 1935) and, later, the space-based weapons platforms.
[edit] Russia After the War
Lenin's interest in the development of the atomic weapon was immediate. He saw it as a weapon to bring the communist revolution to the world and began a program to develop it as a terrorist weapon. Luring several German scientists with the promise of finding peaceful uses of atomic power, Lenin forced them to work on his Tunguska Bomb project, named after the famous 1908 Siberian explosion, in a secluded lab in the Ural mountains. The most notable scientist to be snared by this trap was Dr. Albert Einstein, lured by the promise of science making a better world.
The mind of Einstein ensured Russia first place in the arms race, detonating the first true atomic weapon in 1930 at a test site in a remote part of the Siberian wilderness, overseen by Premier Trotsky in person. Efforts were then focused on miniaturization, attempting to fulfill Lenin's dream of an atomic bomb you could put in a car trunk or even suitcase so that revolutionaries could bring down their capitol cities. This effort was a main factor in the American ICBM program as fears of a world Communist atomic revolution grew in an increasingly fascistic America.
[edit] Japan After the War
Although it was unable to lure very many European scientists, Japan began an extensive atomic espionage program, leading to the theft of the necessary information allowing them to develop their own atomic bomb by 1935. Focusing on quick refinement and mass-production, the Japanese then engaged in an extensive bombing campaign of Asia in an effort to spread the empire. Although this left much of China and the Korean Peninsula unusable in the short term, Japanese studies on the effects of radiation helped them to develop atomic weapons with short half-lives, allowing them to take the land once the radiation had been reduced to safe levels.
To make certain that these emptied cities would not be reclaimed by refugees, a massive germ and chemical warfare campaign supplimented the bombing, virtually depopulating most of Asia, allowing Japan to recolonize much of the continent.
The Soviets, worried about Japan's Asian ambitions, begin development on the Kamchatka Line, a series of atomic bunkers with short-range atomic weapons to defend against Japanese attacks. Dubbed the Second Great Wall by the West, it is derided as a wasted effort.
[edit] The British Empire After the War
Britain was a relative latecomer to the weapons game. Initially, post-war reconstruction, although less expensive than mainland Europe, made such a consideration impossible. However, multiple colonial uprisings made the British determined to use the new atomic sciences to maintain their crumbling empire.
Impressed by the Japanese bombings in Asia, they work in partnership with them, providing money for atomic experimentation in exchange for arms, which they then use on various rebellious parts of the colonies to permanently scare the natives into submission.
[edit] To Be Written
The first post-war, post-atomic conflict- the Invasion of Hawaii by the Japanese in 1940.
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